Posted on: Saturday, March 12, 2005

Power blip caused by balloon disrupts service at Kaiser clinic

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

A power blip that put the Kaiser Honolulu medical clinic out of business for much of yesterday afternoon, and briefly turned out the lights for more than 200 Makiki residents and businesses, was caused by a Mylar balloon that had floated into power lines.

Mylar is an extraordinarily strong polyester that is heat-resistant.

"They conduct electricity, you know," HECO spokesman Jose Dizon said of the balloons. "They go in between the lines and they arc and short out."

Electric company crews can turn the power back on quickly, but must first confirm that a Mylar balloon — and nothing more complicated — was the cause, he said.

Dizon said it took 37 minutes yesterday for the crews to find telltale bits of fried Mylar at King and Pi'ikoi and then reinstate power to 238 customers.

A Safeway store at Beretania and Pensacola streets recuperated quickly and the staff was back to serving customers shortly after power was restored at 12:07 p.m., a spokesman said.

But 37 minutes was long enough to cause problems that lasted throughout the day at the Kaiser Honolulu clinic at King and Pensacola streets.

Spokeswoman Lynn Kenton said that no patient procedures were directly affected by the outage at the clinic, and that emergency power supplies kicked in for essential services.

But the elevators stopped working, she said, and a number of Kaiser technicians were deployed to the Honolulu clinic to reboot computers.

Appointments were canceled as the technicians continued to work, and at 2 p.m., the clinic was shut down for the day.

"So, yeah, that little innocent Mylar balloon did cause some damage," Kenton said.

No one was trapped in the elevators, she said. The Honolulu clinic is not an inpatient facility, so no patients under hospital care were displaced.

Dizon said electrical outages caused by Mylar balloons are a far too frequent occurrence.

"Especially during graduation season," he said.

He encouraged graduates and others who receive Mylar balloons as gifts to hold tightly to them, and encouraged people who buy Mylar balloons to make sure they choose those that are weighted so they will not fly away.

Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.