Seven members of the Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department closed Van Buren Street on Thursday after a village excavator got tangled in power lines, causing a small power outage. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — An excavator tangled in power lines at the Saranac Lake village Department of Public Works garage at the end of Van Buren Street on Thursday, breaking a power line pole and causing a minor outage in that neighborhood.

The driver of the excavator tangled in the charged lines was able to leave the vehicle unharmed, according to Saranac Lake Volunteer Fire Department Head Driver Rick Yorkey, but only after National Grid shut off power to the lines.

Yorkey said the outage reportedly sounded like an explosion to people who called it in.

National Grid spokesman Jared Paventi said the outage was limited to customers on the line that was torn down. A National Grid outage map showed the outage affecting “fewer than five” customers. One of those customers was the Kinney Drugs store on the corner of Broadway and Van Buren.

Jon Vaughn was at the drug store picking up medication for his wife Leslie, who was being released from Adirondack Medical Center a mile down the road. He said he was just about to make the purchase when the power went out, the store went black and employees evacuated the business.

The store couldn’t fill out the prescription and couldn’t transfer them to another store because the power was out, but Vaughn said employees there were working with him to get the medication.

“She’s been in the hospital for two weeks. It will be nice to get her home,” Vaughn said.

The couple from Philadelphia were only supposed to be visiting here for six days, but are ending up staying more than a month in the area.

“She just wants to get back to camp,” Vaughn said of Leslie. “It’s always something. Go figure something like this would happen.”

The lights flickered in the Enterprise newsroom around when the outage occurred at 2:13 p.m. SLVFD members were back in service at 3:20 p.m. after closing the street off.

A National Grid crew was on scene shortly after the outage was reported.

“National Grid was able to respond and redirect power on our system to restore customers quickly,” Paventi wrote in an email at 3:40 p.m. Thursday. “Our crew remains on site to repair the damaged equipment.”