One Power Outage Leads To Another In Waterloo
Mid-American Energy is trying to figure out what caused a large power outage in Waterloo Wednesday morning.
The outage occurred around 3:40 AM and affected more than 3,200 customers, company spokesman Geoff Greenwood said. He confirmed the power failure left homes and businesses on both sides of the Cedar River in the dark. A large part of the downtown area was also affected.
Greenwood described the general boundaries as the 600 block of West Parker Street (north), 400 block of Sunset Road (south), 1100 block of Campbell Avenue (west) and 600 block of Commercial Street (east). **See Map Below**
In an email late Wednesday afternoon, Greenwood said the company is continuing to investigate the cause of the outage.
According to Greenwood, a second outage occurred when crews tried to restore power to the affected area. He said when crews tried to switch those customers back on around 5:20 AM, a piece of a equipment (lightning arrestor) failed and cut electricity to an additional 4,800 customers in Waterloo.
The general boundaries of the second power failure were the 2300 block of Katoski Drive (south), 300 block of Westfield Avenue (East) and 2500 block of Cooley Street (north and west). **See Map Below**
According to Greenwood, the two outages combined affected nearly 8,100 Mid-American customers.
Greenwood said crews restored service tied to the second outage at 6:03 AM. Of the 3,241 customers who lost power in the first outage, 735 had electricity restored at 6:10 AM. The remaining 2,448 customers were back on the power grid by 6:50 AM.