The power went out in my block just now, so I got in my car and drove around and found a utility truck next to a pole that is at the junction between the block circuit and an adjoining circuit (which was on). At that area are two large buildings which used to be industrial buildings fed by three phase power, but the buildings were recently converted to be residential. The pole looked fine. It had some stuff running down the side of it.
The guy was in his cherry picker basket, but only about 10 feet up the pole, well below the wires. He was messing with something for a minute or two, then he made a motion with his hand and there was a blue flash and the whole neighborhood came back on, street lights, houses, everything.
I think he must have caused the outage because I got there in my car in only 2 or 3 minutes after the lights went out, so either it was the fastest power company response time in history, or he deliberately cut off the whole neighborhood for some reason.
What could he have been doing?
