Schools, parts of mall lose power in west Columbia

Electricity to about 2,000 customers was knocked out Tuesday morning because of an outage in west Columbia.

Russell Blvd. Elementary, West Elementary and the Columbia Public School headquarters all lost power.

The affected area is between Fairview and Stadium, near Broadway. According to Columbia Water & Light, a transformer blew near Target. Crews were able reroute power at three different sources.

Traffic lights at Stadium and Broadway were down for about 30 minutes around 10 a.m. Tuesday.

JC Penney at the Columbia mall also briefly closed after losing service.