Power Outage Affects 1,500 Homes and Businesses in Springfield and Lorton

Parts of Lorton and Springfield lost power on Thursday afternoon, affecting 1,535 homes and businesses. Virginia Dominion Power is still determining the cause of the outage, which started at about 11:30 a.m.

"We patrolled the line and we could not identify the specific cause of the outage, but we were able to reroute electricity and get everyone back on. We had our last customer on at 1:48 p.m.," said Virginia Dominion Power spokesperson LeHa Anderson. 

Businesses were temporarily closed at Lorton Station Town Center. "We had to shut down. This is ridiculous. The power goes out several times a year over here," said owner Kostas Daskalakis, who lost $4,000 in equipment and food in . "We lost the entire lunch crowd today. The problem is that all the power for this area is derived from a single source, so when it goes down at one business, it goes down everywhere." 

The problem originated from the Hayfield Sub Station in Springfield.

"Sometimes it's difficult to know what caused an outage. It could be a tree limb that fell and cause a fuse to blow, or an animal could have crawled into the power lines," said Anderson. "This is why it's important for customers to call in and report outages so we can pinpoint the problem as opposed to us checking the entire power line."

Keep up with all things Lorton with the Lorton Patch email newsletter and breaking news alerts. Learn more here.