About 1,600 customers were without power in Palmerton for a brief period of time Thursday evening.

Contacted this morning, Bryan Hay, of PPL Electric Utilities, said the power outage was "caused by a metallic balloon that got stuck in our lines."Hay said the matter was wrapped up safely in about a half-hour.Borough Manager Rodger Danielson said it appeared as though residents from Third Street west may have been without power.Palmerton Hospital was among those affected by the outage, according to Lisa Johnson, Blue Mountain Health System Vice President for Public Relations and Marketing.Johnson said the outage occurred at 7:40 p.m., at which time the hospital went on emergency power and maintenance was on site."We did have to divert our emergency room for about 45 minutes (due to some of its imaging equipment)," Johnson said. "There were no real problems; a couple of computer applications that took awhile to come back up."Johnson said that by about 8:30 p.m., everything was back to normal at the hospital.