Deputy Police Chief Beau Thurnauer said shortly before 11 a.m. that his office phone is not working, and the computers in the public safety complex seem to be affected, too.
The complex at the corner of Burnside Avenue and School Street is operating on a generator, Lt. Josh Litwin said. The whole neighborhood is affected, he said. The building houses the police and fire departments.
Police are operating on their backup radio frequency, he said. and 911 calls are not affected by the problem.
"We're on backup systems and we're operating fine," Litwin said.
Officers also were able to communicate on their department cellphones, Thurnauer said.
As of 11:45 a.m. Wednesday, 892 Eversource customers in East Hartford had no power, according to the power company's website. By noon, the number had dropped to 416, about 2 percent of the town.
Assistant Fire Chief William Perez said a transformer fire in the 200 block of Burnside Avenue may be what caused the problem.
Litwin said there were reports of "pops" being heard in the neighborhood at the time of the power outage. He's not sure if the transformer problem is what cause the outage or if it was the result of some kind of power problem.
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