Multiple traffic signals in Old Town Alexandria went dark Monday morning following equipment fires that left nearly 700 Dominion Energy customers without power, according to Alexandria Police Department and utility outage maps.
The department issued a traffic alert at 8:46 a.m. warning drivers that many signals were out of service after what police initially described as a “manhole incident” at the intersection of Cameron and Fayette streets. Transportation and Environmental Services is deploying generators to restore power to the affected intersections.
According to Dominion Energy’s outage map, four separate equipment fires are affecting 695 customers across the Old Town area. The largest outage involves 537 customers, with restoration estimated between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. The other three outages affect 69, 70 and 19 customers respectively, with crews working on all four incidents.
Police are advising motorists to treat all dark signals as four-way stops and exercise caution while traveling through the area.
Old Town Alexandria typically experiences heavy traffic during morning rush hour, and the signal outage could cause significant delays for commuters traveling through the historic district.
This is a developing story.
