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A 160-foot blade detached from a wind turbine Sunday in Gloucester, Massachusetts, prompting road closures around the structure in the Blackburn Industrial Park.
Multiple outlets reported that there was no cause given for the blade being detached, nor was there any damage to property outside of the blade itself, which appeared to snap into two pieces.
Applied Materials, the owner and operator of the 492-foot turbine, said it couldn’t find any structural concerns with the turbine or its two remaining blades.
A spokesperson for the company told National Wind Watch, a nonprofit that highlights the shortcomings of wind power, that a “root-cause analysis is underway and will take some time to complete.”
Applied Materials said that built-in safety mechanisms functioned as designed when it detected an issue and stopped the three-bladed turbine sometime during the pre-dawn hours on Sunday morning.
Correction: This story has been updated to clarify the position of the nonprofit National Wind Watch.
