May 22, 2016
Multiple residents in the area of Philadelphia's Washington Square were left without power Sunday morning after an underground cable failure forced a series of evacuations overnight.
According to PECO spokeswoman Debra Yemenijian, the outages were caused by an overheated cable. There was no fire underground and what may have sounded to some residents like an explosion near 6th and Pine streets was in fact pressurized heat exiting a manhole.
As a precaution, some residents in the area were evacuated from their homes and held from returning until about 10 a.m.
Service has been restored to the majority of PECO customers and permanent repairs to the underground cable are in progress.
Those without power can consult PECO's outage map for an update on the status of their service.
