This also happened at the intersection of Grove and Montgomery one night in 2006. My husband was sitting with my brother and a friend at Merchant, and witnessed the actual explosion. I was on my way to meet them and saw the flames come up from the manholes (yes, plural). Fortunately there were no cars above the manhole at the time of the explosion, but it's very disturbing to think that this has happened twice (maybe more?) over the past 4 years.

EDIT: It looks like it happened in 2007 and 2008, too!

WTF is going on? Is the city going to do anything about this?

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Thanks guys, I was wondering what had caused the interruption. I didn't hear the bang.

Power went off momentarily throughout Newport and it played havoc with my DVR which took 24 hours to reformat itself. Had me nervous thinking I might have lost a lot of planned watching.

Funny, we've gone a LONG, LONG time with never a flicker and now twice in as many months. Presumably all this electrical equipment is pretty new on the waterfront...guess they're using junkier transformers or the infrastructure just isn't keeping up with development?

An underground transformer exploded at Portofino -- a small yet bright fireball came up the grating in the driveway. Power flickered for a second or two.

A low deep sounding explosion followed by everything being lit bright orange. It was quite scary considering I was in my bedroom with the blinds drawn yet the room light up like it was noon!

JCFD responded and requested PSEG for an underground transformer that was on fire.

Anyone know what the loud noise was that caused a brief power outage in the waterfront area by Harborside place tonight?