Breaker fire blamed on mechanical failure

A mechanical failure inside a circuit breaker Monday morning caused it to explode, leaving some Morgan City residents without power for about an hour, City Utilities Director Bill Cefalu said.
The Sixth Street circuit breaker exploded Monday morning, shutting the Federal Avenue power substation, Cefalu said. The breaker was over 50 years old and had gone through maintenance annually.
“But, evidently, the amount of reactions that the breaker has gone through … over time, some of the mechanical parts in it actually failed,” Cefalu said. The part failures caused the breaker to heat up and then explode, he said.
The Morgan City Fire Department received a call reporting the fire at 9:56 a.m. Monday. Firefighters were on scene at 9:57 a.m. and put out the fire within 15 to 20 minutes with a dry chemical, Fire Chief Alvin Cockerham said. Firefighters were back at the station by 10:31 a.m. Monday.
The area that lost power because of the explosion included Levee Road continuing to Sixth Street and then from Brashear Avenue to the river, Cefalu said. Workers restored power to the entire affected area within an hour, he said.
Officials took the Federal Avenue substation out of service temporarily to clean up the roughly 10 gallons of oil that spilled and replace the breaker with a backup breaker at the substation, he said. The substation should be back online by Wednesday or Thursday, Cefalu said.
Damage from the fire was limited to the Federal Avenue substation, and no one was injured during the incident, Cockerham said.