Entergy officials said a surge caused by an explosion in alightning arrestor caused a power outage in downtown BrookhavenChristmas morning.

The outage occurred at 7:46 a.m. Tuesday, and affected a sizableportion of downtown until crews had the line back up and working at8:27 a.m. It not known not how many customers were affected by theoutage.

“The circuit that fed the downtown shorted out when one of ourlightning arrestors blew up on the line,” said Entergy CustomerAccounts Manager Kenny Goza. “It shorted out the line and causedthe power to go out in the downtown area.”

Area Line Supervisor Gary Hutson said the arrestor could haveblown up for any number of reasons.

“The purpose of a lightning arrestor is to eliminate lightningstriking the line and burning it down,” he said. “The lightningwill hit the arrestor and crack it, and then over time the rain canget in there and short it out. It can be as simple as a crack inthe porcelain.”

Hutson said when such an event occurs, officials are alertedwhen customers call in, at which point headquarters in Jackson willcall out a service team.

“They’ll ride the line until they find the problem,” he said.”Sometimes it’s a tree down on the line or whatever, but they’llfind it and then they fix it.”