How does an “outage” fry equipment? A power surge will ruin equipment but how does no power fry something?
Electric motors are rather sensitive to under voltage conditions and "brown outs" below 10% can and do damage air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers, well pumps, sump pumps, door openers, &c. As the voltage drops the motors slow down which limits the air cooling and the current rises which adds to the heat loading, too much of that and the motor is toast.
This incident however, sounds more like they (power company) had a short between the primary and secondary coils of a pole transformer. In my neighborhood that means the distribution side (14,400 Vac) gets applied to your house wiring which should be 240 Vac split into two 120 Vac legs phased 180° apart.
That happened to a friend of mine a few years ago and it wiped out all the electronics in his house (& neighbors connected to the same transformer). He had surge protectors on most of the computer/TV lines but they didn't help at all as they vaporized instantly. Typical surges on a power grid are caused by switching transients and lightning and may be thousands of volts but only last for a few milliseconds, therefore they represent relatively low power in total. When you get a transformer failure the voltage goes up by x60 or so and stays there until something melts. If your real lucky, your house may not catch fire.
Regards,
GtG
PS I've also seen it happen in an industrial plant. About four hundred yards of buss bars and several hundred motor starter boxes blew. It took several weeks to get the shop back up and running.
“How does an “outage” fry equipment?”
Glendale has a history of high voltage power surges up to and above 175 volts.
I have a Fazar range and have had to replace the circut board in it and at the same time a large capacator in the electronic air filter that blew apart 3 different times in the last 35 years.