About 3,600 Met-Ed customers in Reading and West Reading lost power Monday morning due to a Met-Ed equipment failure.
The problem was discovered shortly before 9 a.m. Power restored by noon.
Around the same time, West Reading Fire Department was dispatched to investigate a smoke condition in Sacred Heart Church and its adjacent kindergarten to eighth grade school, which remained closed for the Thanksgiving holiday break.
It was determined that some mechanical units inside the church and school at South Eighth Avenue and Cherry Street were experiencing problems as a result of the power disruption, West Reading Fire Chief Chad Moyer said. This created a haze in the buildings, but no fire, he said.
Moyer said Met-Ed personnel indicated the outages were the result of a phase loss.
A phase loss event is when one of the three phases in a three-phase electrical system fails, causing the other two remaining phases to draw excessive current. This can lead to severe damage, overheating and failure of connected equipment such as chillers, pumps and other motorized equipment with three-phase motors.
Moyer said Met-Ed was repairing the power line.
Parish officials were directed to contact an electrician and HVAC service to inspect electric and heating systems, respectively, and assess the need for repairs.