Update at 11:10 p.m. — Currently 907 customers in Arlington are without power, according to Dominion.
(Updated at 9:50 p.m.) More than 5,000 Dominion customers were without power in parts of north Arlington tonight due to an extended outage.
The outage was first reported around 6 p.m. and is affecting much of the Lee Highway corridor between Lyon Village and East Falls Church. Multiple transformer fires were also reported.
Dominion’s website reported at 8:30 p.m. that 5,427 customers in Arlington are in the dark and that the cause of the outage is “pending investigation.” The estimated restoration time is listed as between 8-11 p.m.
The timing of the outage is causing some anxiety among Arlington’s political-savvy populace, with the minutes ticking down to the 9 p.m. start of the third and final presidential debate.
Transformer fire photos (above) courtesy Andrew Pang
https://twitter.com/lincolnacfd/status/788887656973398016
https://twitter.com/seberman/status/788877542094671872
@ilovearlingtonv @ARLnowDOTcom there's apparently an electrical pole on fire on Washington Blvd.
— Tyler (@jtdant) October 19, 2016
@ARLnowDOTcom riding my bike from Sycamore to Lorcom & Nellie Custis – many but not all neighborhoods w/out electricity. What's going on?
— Debby Bowman (@bowmandj626) October 20, 2016
@ARLnowDOTcom Crews repairing blown transformer on McKinley/Washington. Burned wires on ground. pic.twitter.com/xZHrPhelp8
— Joe Hardy (@johnjosephhardy) October 20, 2016