Power has been restored to all Evergy customers offline since 10 am after a batch of outages unfolded in central, south and southeast Emporia.
Close to 1,200 customers were impacted for almost two hours. Evergy spokesman Justin Daily says a fire developed in the East Street substation around 10 am due to a squirrel that got into a switch between two transformers.
The fire initially caused well over 100 small-scale outages in central and southeast Emporia, along with a separate outage that affected nearly 60 customers just east of Emporia. Those were later consolidated into fewer than 10 outages.
Outages impacted the Lyon County Courthouse, although people could use the advance vote process in the Election Office and several did. County Clerk Tammy Vopat says there were no issues. LCAT, however, had to put rider scheduling on hold because of both the outage and its impact on wireless Internet service. Director Shane Brunner says drivers could handle a small set of riders until the Internet came back on shortly afternoon.
Simmons Pet Food was without power for about 90 minutes. Several downtown businesses were offline, and the KVOE transmitter was down for a short period. Several downtown lights, notably on Commercial and Merchant, were also affected.
Meanwhile, Newman Regional Health is reporting that all external communications are currently down within the hospital. Newman reports that all internal station-to-station calls are still functioning.
A news release from the hospital claims the failure was due to a “unexpected outage.” It is unclear if this was the same outage that affected Evergy customers earlier Monday.
10:45 am Monday: Substation fire likely cause of scattered power outages in and around Emporia Monday; restoration work underway
Restoration work is underway after a host of power outages developed in and around Emporia Monday morning.
According to Evergy Spokesperson Justin Daily, a fire that developed in the East Street substation is the apparent cause of the scattered outages. Evergy crews are currently on scene working to restore power after more than 100 outages developed shortly after 10 am.
The loss of power has included the Lyon County Courthouse, several downtown Emporia businesses, some downtown traffic lights and at one time the transmitter for the KVOE radio stations. A larger outage also developed just southeast of Emporia knocking out power to close to 60 Evergy customers.
A restoration time for the outages is currently pending. We’ll keep you updated on KVOE, KVOE.com and KVOE social media.
10:15 am: Numerous power outages develop in south Emporia
Most of them aren’t large, but there are a host of power outages in and around Emporia on Monday morning.
Issues developed shortly after 10 am. As of 10:15 am, there were more than 100 small outages for Evergy customers in central and southeast Emporia, including the transmitter to the KVOE radio stations. There was a larger outage just southeast of town affecting close to 60 Evergy customers.
Emporia Fire was called out to a transformer fire in the 200 block of South East around 10:15 am. No connection has been made to the outages at this time.
We’ll keep you updated on KVOE, KVOE.com and KVOE social media.
