ST. GEORGE – Communities across Washington County were hit with a large power outage Monday night.
Comments of the outage started popping up on Facebook around 9:25 p.m. starting with Washington City and soon spreading to east and central St. George as well as parts of Hurricane and Leeds.
According to St. George Police, a transformer blew, triggering the widespread blackout.
Washington City officials added additional details around 10:50 p.m. over social media: “Power problem was caused in St. George’s sub it was a bad lighting arrester that is connected to the transmission lines. Power should be on within the next hour and a half.”
Both St. George and Washington City officials were reporting power had been restored to both cities by around 11 p.m.
The Police Department is asking that people not call 911 due to the outage unless it is an emergency. Doing so ties up the lines and may prevent a response to a more urgent call.
Marc Mortensen, support services director for the city of St. George, said the outage primarily hit people on the east side of St. George while the west side was unaffected.
According to the city’s Facebook page, power crews at the River Substation slowly began to re-engerize power lines to St. George after finding the cause of the outage.
Rocky Mountain Power, which supplies electricity to Leeds, LaVerkin, Rockville and Hurricane, reports on its power outage page that over 1,400 customers in those areas were without power. As of 11 p.m., that has shrunk to 343 with power expected to be restored by 2 a.m.
This article will be updated as additional information becomes available.
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Twitter: @MoriKessler
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Mike Shaw the public works director from washimgton city will say. It worked until it didn’t
And as soon as they get it fixed they’ll have it back on.