A power outage that hit West Jordan's west side early Friday lasted more than 10 hours before Rocky Mountain Power crews were able to locate and fix the problem.
The outage started at about 5 a.m. Friday, Rocky Mountain Power spokesman Jeff Hymas said. At first, the outage affected about 120 customers. By 7 a.m., the outage had spread to 850 customers.
The outage was in the area of 8400 South and 5050 West. That part of the city is almost exclusively residential — a mix of new neighborhoods and one or two older developments, said City Councilman Lyle Summers, whose district includes the affected area.
Hymas said the outage was caused by a problem with a connector on an underground power line. He said crews worked to make the repairs "as safely and as quickly as possible," but power for most of the area was not restored until 2:16 p.m. — and some homes were without power until 3:30 p.m. because "we were not aware that a section of line was still isolated" when the first repairs were made.
"It often takes longer to repair problems affecting underground power lines because it can be more difficult to locate the exact cause of the failure," Hymas said. "In this case, once crews had located it, they had to get some additional equipment in order to make the repairs."
Hymas said the cause of the connector problem was unclear.
Rocky Mountain Power is the major electric provider in Utah. Formerly Utah Power, the name was changed to Rocky Mountain Power earlier this month by parent company, PacifiCorp.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com