Power outages due to Back Bay fire

BOSTON (WHDH) -- In was eerily dark in Boston's Back Bay Wednesday morning, with about 10,000 customers powerless following Tuesday's transformer fire.

That number was down from about 21,000 at the height of the outage, Tuesday. NStar workers were out in force, working to get the power restored. Officials expected power to be restored to all customers by 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.

As the workday came to a close, Tuesday, fire alarms sounded in the Back Bay. Heavy black smoke poured from an electrical substation as a transformer caught fire and then exploded. The heart of Boston was plunged into darkness.

"It's just smoke," Bobby Shakes said. "You just see smoke and the lights from the fire trucks, that's about it. That's all you could see. There's nothing visible down there."

At first, firefighters feared the smoke was toxic; pedestrians were told to get out of the street and people living nearby needed to keep their windows shut.

Mayor Menino said Boston crews would work nonstop to get things up and running again, hopefully by morning.

"We're all working hard on this and we want to make sure we're all back on line as quickly as possible," he said.

Mayor Menino said to expect businesses in the area to be closed on Wednesday. Berklee School of Music, Fisher College and the New England College of Optometry all reported closures Wednesday.

T stations closed as of 5:30 a.m.:

--Symphony
--Prudential

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