A tree limb that made contact with a power line is believed to the culprit responsible for knocking out power to a section of East Forest Park early Saturday morning.
Updates a story published Saturday at 6:25 a.m.
SPRINGFIELD -- Police reported that power has been restored to a section of East Forest Park without electricity since shortly after 5 a.m. Saturday.
A Springfield police officer said a tree limb that made contact with a power line is believed to be the culprit that "knocked the power out," causing outages between Allen Street, Plumtree Road and Sumner Avenue around 5:04 a.m.
As of 6:53 a.m., however, the power was back on and the tree limb had been trimmed, police said.
Earlier police reports indicated sparks were seen coming from a blown transformer in the East Forest neighborhood. That information could not immediately be verified with officials at Western Massachusetts Electric Co., which responded to the outage and indicated on its website that some 855 Springfield customers were without power at the time of the report.
Traffic lights at at least two key intersections -- Sumner Avenue and Allen Street and Roosevelet Avenue and Plumtree Road -- lost power, prompting authorities to place portable stop signs in those areas.