Equipment issue at Eversource substation causes fire and outages in Newton
June 2022Published 8 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor
What happened
On a Monday morning in June 2022, an equipment issue at an Eversource substation in Newton, Massachusetts, caused a small fire shortly before 11 a.m. The issue knocked out power to about 2,500 customers in the area. Eversource said it restored power to approximately 600 customers using remote switching and that crews would work to restore the remaining customers as quickly as safely possible. One Eversource worker was taken to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The cause remained under investigation at the time of reporting, and the story was described as developing.
Contributing factors
The source states only that an equipment issue caused the fire. No specific equipment or failure mode was identified, and the cause was under investigation.
Lessons learned
- Substation equipment faults can start fires and cause wide outages, so operators should review fault detection and isolation for energised equipment.
- Remote switching can restore most customers quickly while crews make the area safe and work on the remaining load.
- Crews working near a fire at energised equipment face injury risk, so incident response plans should cover hospital transfer and worker welfare.
More lessons on detection and monitoring, outages, backup supply and restoration, worker safety and safe systems of work, from every incident on the register.
Source
Other entries that name Eversource
Published 2026-10-08. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.