About 1,400 Westar customers lost power late Wednesday night after an electrical substation went down in western Emporia.
Westar spokesman Nick Bundy said some of the breakers at the substation failed around 11:10 p.m., turning the lights out for a number of people between Commercial Street, Prairie Street, 12th Avenue and the south city limits. It took until 1:50 a.m. today to get everything working again, he said.
The Emporia Fire Department called in the outage shortly after it began, recording it as a transformer failure at 618 W. Sixth Ave.
“I know we saw the flash from Industrial,” fire Capt. Steve Rhoads said. “It was impressive.”
Shortly after the blackout, somebody at the Broadview Towers apartment building called firefighters to report a diesel smell. The smell was from the building’s backup generator turning on.
Bundy said he didn’t know why the equipment had failed.