‘It’s unbearable!’ Southie residents seek relief in cars during 24-hour experience without power

SOUTH BOSTON — The lights are back on in a South Boston neighborhood that had been without electricity and air conditioning for nearly 24 hours.

Neighbors in the area of Columbia Road and N Street first lost power Sunday night around 7 p.m.

About 400 remained without power around 4 p.m. Monday, and more than 100 didn’t have power back until shortly before 7 p.m. Monday night.

Eversource crews worked all night and day to replace burned out underground cables that were fried by high temperatures and a surge in demand.

The outage happened as the city of Boston approached its seventh consecutive day of a heat emergency.

“It’s unbearable! I can’t even stay in my apartment it’s so hot,” said Maggie O’Brien, who lives on the 700 block of E Sixth Street.

Southie residents could be seen seeking relief in their vehicles on both Sunday and Monday.

Some slept inside their cars.

Others used their vehicles for air conditioning breaks and a source of electricity to charge electronics.

“I had low battery on my phone and had to sit in my car for quite a while,” said Brady Liss, who lives in a building on N and E 6th. “It’s been pretty tough.”

Eversource workers were seen knocking on doors and asking some neighbors to move their cars so they could access manholes to fix the issue underground.

“During this stretch of hot weather, we have experienced a handful of large outages across Massachusetts, and we have restored power to more than 73,000 customers since the start of the heat wave,” said a statement from Eversource.

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