Airborne Balloons Knock Out Power For 2,200 Santa Clara Residents

SANTA CLARA - Loose balloons knocked out power for 2,200 residents and businesses in Santa Clara Tuesday, power company officials said.

The outage happened at about 1 p.m., disrupting the Rivermark area of the city, including traffic lights at several intersections, according to Santa Clara's energy provider, Silicon Valley Power.

Within about 20 minutes, 1,300 customers had their power restored.

By 2 p.m., only about 350 were without power. Everyone had their power restored by 2:30 p.m.

A bouquet of balloons had gotten into the power lines, causing the outage. They caught fire and were a melted mess by the time crews found them, Silicon Valley Power customer service manager Larry Owens said.

Owens said the provider has between four and six outages per year related to balloons, and there tend to be more around the upcoming holidays of Mother's Day, Father's Day and spring graduations.

He issued a statement today warning of the potential dangers of releasing balloons.

"The careless release of helium balloons causes multiple outages in the South Bay every year, putting drivers at risk and sometimes impacting critical health care facilities and medical equipment," Owens said.

"Today's outage affected an area with many small businesses, including a precision machine shop that loses product when it loses power, Owens said. "These outages just don't need to happen," Owens said.

-Bay City News, image via Radosław Drożdżewski (User:Zwiadowca21) and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.