Power restored for most in Jamaica Plain; brief outage affects thousands along South Shore

By Matt Rocheleau and Sarah N. Mattero, Globe Correspondents

As power was restored for several hundred NStar customers in Boston Sunday night, several thousand other customers along the South Shore briefly lost eletrical service.

About 4,500 customers in the neighboring towns of Marshfield, Duxbury and Scituate lost power at about 9:30 p.m. Sunday, according to NStar spokeswoman Annemarie Walsh.

The outage was caused by “equipment failure” at one of the utility’s stations in Duxbury, she said.

Within a half hour, service had been restored for all but about 100 customers. Those still without power were expected to have service restored “at any minute,” she said at about 9:45 p.m.

Power was also expected to be restored around that time for customers in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, where hundreds had been without power for much of the day.

About 850 customers lost power there around 5:50 a.m., Walsh said. About 425 were still without power at 2:45 p.m.

By 9:30 p.m., about 100 customers still had no power, she said. NStar crews were in the process of hooking them up to a generator.

“They should be expecting power shortly, if it’s not back on already,” Walsh said.

The weather caused underground equipment to fail, which led to the outage, she said.

Walsh said the utility was not able to restore power sooner because, in order to reach the undergound equipment, crews had to first locate where the problem had occurred below ground, then needed a front-end loader to clear snow and then needed pumps to clear water.