On Monday just over 40% of Conshohocken lost power, along with approximately 150 accounts in Whitemarsh Township. The outage last less than hour and was isolated to the eastern side of Conshohocken. At the same time there was an incident in the intersection of Ridge Pike, North Lane and Chemical Road. A reader, who was at the light at this intersection, reported seeing a manhole cover blow and a fireball shoot out.

If you tried to pass through this intersection today you saw PECO crews surrounding two manholes. The lane from Chemical Road that feeds Colwell Lane was closed. Traffic was really backed up and it took us about 30 minutes to come up Chemical Road from Germantown Pike to reach North Lane.

We didn’t think the two incidents were connected as the power didn’t go out right around that intersection. We emailed PECO’s press office to ask for details on the power outage and the incident at the intersection and found out they were indeed connected. A representative of PECO shared:

Yesterday, at around 9 a.m. we experienced an issue with an underground electric cable in the vicinity of Ridge Pike and Chemical Road. This impacted service to approximately 2,200 customers in the area for an average of 40 minutes.

Our crews are working in the area to remove a portion of the damaged cable and replace it with new cable. We will be working around the clock to safely complete this work as quickly as possible to minimize the impact on traffic. We expect to complete this work tomorrow.

So give yourself some extra time if you need to travel through that intersection on Wednesday.