A Dominion Energy employee suffered burns after an underground cable failed and caused an arc flash explosion in Arlington, Virginia, leading to thousands of outages.
Approximately 10,000 customers lost electricity around Crystal City and Pentagon City on Tuesday afternoon. Dominion Energy spokeswoman Peggy Fox said the incident began around noon, and that the injured employee was treated at the scene and is expected to recover.
Fox attributed the power outage to a “splice” in an underground cable. Dominion said power should be restored by Tuesday night. As of 11:30 p.m. Tuesday night, only 5 outages were being reported.
Arlington Now reported that county fire personnel responded to a large number of stuck elevator calls in the area, owing to the sudden outage.
Reagan National Airport also briefly lost power around noon. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said the issue there was resolved quickly, and it was unclear if the two outages were related.