The cause of last night’s widespread power outage was a short circuit which occurred between two power lines — one a Hydro One transmission line carrying heavy voltage — the other a Toronto Hydro local transmission line underneath it. They got too close and that caused “a flash.” And that caused the lights to go out. Sounds reasonable and given the number of wires strung around town it’s a bit of a surprise that it doesn’t happen more often. Those who look up at mixed service areas of transmission wires and distribution wires would normally expect to see them strung with at least four or five feet between them.
