About 5,000 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers lost power Tuesday night, some for more than an hour, while voters waited in line to cast their votes in the presidential election.
The outage affected a corridor that ran from Reese through Westminster and Frizzellburg to Union Mills.
A Carroll County Board of Elections official said none of the polling places had to be closed and everyone who was in line was able to vote.
The power interruption started at 6:54 p.m. In some areas, service was returned in just a couple of minutes as BG&E; workers were able to switch circuits for customers in
downtown Westminster.
In other areas power was not restored until 8:06 p.m.
One employee of Westminster Nursing and Convalescent Home, in the 1200 block of Washington Road, was trapped in an elevator for about 10 minutes until firefighters could respond. Many traffic signals were knocked out of operation, and police were kept busy checking burglar alarms set off by the interruption in power.
The outage was caused by a "cable problem feeding a transformer" on a pole at John and Carroll streets, said company spokesman John Metzger.
The county office building was without electricity for more than an hour, delaying the start of vote-tallying.