LEESBURG, Fla. – After spending most of the night without power, many Leesburg residents were relieved to have power restored Tuesday night.
Much of the city was left dark after lightning sparked a fire at a power plant, officials said.
As of 10 p.m. Tuesday, the city reported that two of its three substations affected by the incident had been repaired and some service had been restored.
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But many customers, mainly in downtown Leesburg, remained in the dark early Wednesday as crews worked to reconnect the third substation.
Via social media, the city said those repairs were ongoing and would continue until other residents had power restored.
According to Leesburg Fire Rescue, the electrical substation east of US 441 sustained fire damage when lightning struck Duke Florida’s transmission system around 7:30 p.m.
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The system, which supplies most of Leesburg’s power, went offline, causing the widespread outage.
About 12,600 customers in Leesburg were without power initially, city officials said.
Parts of Fruitland Park were also affected by the outage.
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Additional Leesburg police officers were called to help direct drivers to intersections with inoperable traffic signals.
Leesburg city officials did not estimate a time when power would be fully restored.
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