Power restored to more than 700 Columbia Water and Light customers, traffic light back on

UPDATE 07/21/16 11:06 a.m. – ABC 17 News spoke with Connie Kacprowicz of Columbia Water and Light and she confirmed that power went out in the pictured area around 4:30 this morning.

Crews had power restored to the 750 customers affected in about an hour and a half.

She said the lightning arrestor was probably struck by lightning in one of Columbia’s recent storms and did its job to protect the system, but then failed today as a result of that strike.

Kacprowicz also confirmed the traffic signal at Vandiver and Rangeline was down.

Columbia police said they had officers in that area helping direct traffic until power was restored at approximately 5:57 a.m.

They also say their records don’t indicate any crashes took place during the outage.

ORIGINAL – ABC 17 News confirmed with an employee at Columbia Water and Light that a subdivision was without power this morning.

The Columbia Water and Light outage map indicated that more than 700 customers were affected in the outage.

We heard reports that outage also affected the traffic lights at Vandiver and Rangeline in Columbia.

Officers were reportedly in the area helping direct traffic until power was restored just after 6 a.m.

ABC 17 News put in calls to several utility numbers and is waiting to hear back about what caused the outage and if there were any crashes at the Vandiver and Rangeline intersection while the signal was out.