just read what you said about Air Circuit Breakers. Where are those located? I know sometimes that a transformer nearby will blow an internal fuse and the COOP guy has to come out to replace it before power will come back on.
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ACB's are located at the substation (sub). 4KV and 12KV transformers have fuses located near them. A small, quick short will not generally blow the hard fuses in the line, but may trip the circuit breaker at the sub. Line fuses require a hard short for three complete cycles, circuit breakers only one.

Things may have changed a little since I was a power engineer at the PG&E research facility in San Ramon, CA, but power is power, and it has been handled almost the same since the early 1900's.