Lacey Mason, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – A power outage in Anne Arundel County, including the Annapolis Mall, caused confusion Thursday night and left more than 70,000 people in the dark at the height of the outage.
The blackout started around 9 p.m.
The power was back on early Friday morning, although there have been some weather-related outages.
Baltimore Gas and Electric spokesman Rob Gould told WTOP that “two main feeders into Annapolis” and a high voltage transmission line went down.
The outage was centered around the Generals Highway area in Annapolis.
Annapolis mayor Josh Cohen said all city systems operated normally on generator power.
Some reports there was a fire surrounding the outage, but Anne Arundel Fire did not receive any calls from BGE regarding a fire.
Anne Arundel Medical Center staff said the hospital ran on a generator and everything was fine.
Many residents in and around Annapolis called WTOP to share their stories.
“We could see out the window the sky light up, and we heard a couple of pops, the lights were flickering, we assumed that it was a transformer going,” said Tom, who lives in Annapolis and witnessed the sky lighting up as the power went out.
“Lights came back on, then the sky lit up again, lights went out and the strangest thing was you could hear this very distinct noise…it’s really hard to describe. It was just very loud and very distinct, almost a big humming sound.”
Then, Tom says, he went upstairs, looked out his front door and got a better view.
“High tension power lines are probably about 300 yards from our house through the woods, and you could literally see, I could almost describe it as a fireball sort of rolling along on the other side of the woods, I mean just lighting up the sky like it was daytime.”
Several residents in the area shot the following videos, showing the sky above the Annapolis Mall area lighting up as the power went out.
Note: There is adult language in the first video.
On a lighter note, Twitter was buzzing after the sky lit up with talk of the Mayan prophecy calling for the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012.
Here are some of our favorites.
Judging by the tweets from my Annapolis tweeps, the Mayan thing is happening there LOL. #itsjustapoweroutage
— Mike Althouse (@USNA86) December 21, 2012
And when I say breathe at the Annapolis Mall, this is not the Mayan Prophecy coming true.I am confident of that.
— ariashe (@ariashe) December 21, 2012
Oddly, electricity out downtown Annapolis. BGE says: till midnight. Our boys, 8 & 10 quip: maybe Mayan calendar was right.
— ebonsign (@ebonsign) December 21, 2012
Despite the talk, it’s clear the world did not end.
WTOP’s Michelle Basch and Ari Ashe contributed to this report. Follow @MBaschWTOP, @AriAsheWTOP and @LaceyWTOP and @WTOP on Twitter.
(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)
