Several brilliant flashes of light concern neighbors in North Carolina

What could have caused the brilliant flashes of light, power failure and odd animal behavior in the small town of Fuquay, North Carolina?  Read the details of this report, below.

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MUFON Case #  22277
Date/Time:  03/12/ 2010 03:13
Location:  Fuquay, North Carolina
Summary:    Did not actually see a craft, however I did see a very scary flash of bright light 4-5 times that was blinding

Report:
At 3:13 AM eastern time I was awakened by the 4-5 brightest flashes I have ever encountered. I thought lightning had struck my home because it was so intense, but I never heard a sound (thunder).

Following this extreme flash that resembled the intensity of a Arc Welder I proceeded outside to see if I could observe anything obvious. I walked outside and this strange feeling was surrounding me. There was absolutely "Zero Wind" it was not raining, so I knew it could not have been a lighting strike.

I went across the street to my neighbors house as I noticed she was lighting candles in her house for light. All power was gone, and I knew it was not a transformer blowing up as it could not do this 4-5 times. She also did not feel normal and this is why she also awakened.

We turned on her battery operated radio and could not get any signal for any stations - just white noise. She also had a XM radio and this picked up stations. Our Cell phones also would not get a signal. We both decided to get in the car and take a drive just to see if anyone had been in a car wreck and hit a power line.

We both jointly commented at the same time of the eerie animal behavior. I have never seen so many animals walking around as stunned as we were.

After driving for a while and not seeing anything we decided to call authorities in case someone had run into something and needed help. The operator had no reportings of power outages and accidents. This was approx 15-20 min after the sighting. Our radios and cell phones by this time were working in the car and power was still out.

When we got back to our neighbor hood and proceeded to go back inside we heard a strange deep whistling noise in the sky. After the sound had left power was restored.

My neighbors solar cell system is not working and the intense light overloaded her electrical system. The company that came out to repair said they had never seen anything like this.

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Note:  Could this incident have been cause by some type of craft, or could it have been several electrical transformers arcing in sequence? 
Your comments are welcome.

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