A pair of nearly simultaneous power outages had First Energy crews busy Friday afternoon.

One occurred when a breaker "tripped" at the Edison substation on Southern Boulevard in Boardman.  The outage knocked out service to a large portion of the township, including the commercial area near South Avenue and Route 224.

At one point, police had to direct traffic through the intersection there.

The other outage effected parts of Youngstown, Liberty and Girard, and was caused by a car accident.

In all, close to eight thousand two hundred customers lost power for a time.