CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Power is back on for thousands of AEP Texas customers on the southside.
That part of the city went dark yesterday afternoon because of a fire at a substation.
That AEP spokesperson says that mechanical failure could have been triggered by several things like an animal or tree limb.
It could have been weather related or simply malfunctioning equipment.
Whatever it was it triggered a large fire at the substation that spread quickly.
Crews were sent out immediately to put the fire out then make sure it was safe to assess the damages.
AEP says the fire caused extensive damage to the substation.
But crews were actively working to restore power to customers on the southside.
At this time, they do not anticipate any more outages.
“This mechanical failure that triggered a fire is a special event, a special incident that's going to take a lot of investigating,” said AEP spokesman Omar Lopez. “We're really going to look and see what happened and what caused the fire. We're going to see what caused the fire to spread so quickly."
The mechanical failure happened around 2 p.m.yesterday.
More than 14,000 people left without power on the city's south side, near the Lakes area and Kings Crossing.
Everyone had their power restored by 2 a.m. Thursday.
But about 2,500 customers were without power for about an hour this morning as crews had to turn off a circuit to safely finish making another repair.
AEP crews are still making repairs at the Rodd Field Substation.
They'll then monitor the substation for the next few days.
