UPDATE: Power restored to all Columbia Water and Light customers; two causes for outage

UPDATE 10 a.m.: Power has been restored to all Columbia Water and Light customers Sunday morning.

Lucia Bourgeois, a spokesperson for Columbia Water and Light, said a squirrel got on a power line, burned the line and damaged one circuit just after 6:30 a.m.

Bourgeois said smaller outages south of Stadium Boulevard and west of Rangeline Road were part of a larger system outage that occurred centrally, across from the Water and Light Distribution off of Business Loop 70.

Because the power line was damaged, the outage lasted longer than normal while crews repaired it, Bourgeois said.

UPDATE 9:10 a.m.: Columbia Water and Light crews were seen working on a utility pole just outside of the utility’s municipal power plant on Business Loop 70.

The number of customers without power decreased to 51.

ABC 17 News is waiting to hear back from a Columbia Water and Light spokesperson to find out the cause of the outage.

UPDATE 8:30 a.m.: More than 1,500 Columbia Water and Light customers are experiencing a power outage.

Crews said they are working to find the cause.

ORIGINAL: Hundreds of Columbia Water and Light customers experienced a power outage Sunday morning, according to the utility’s outage map.

The map showed that more than 850 people were without power around 6:45 a.m. At 7:15 a.m. it showed that 914 customers were without power. At 9:00 a.m., that number reached 1,517.

Lucia Bourgeois, a spokesperson for Columbia Water and Light, said crews are on their way to find the cause of the outage.

This is a developing story. ABC 17 News will continue to update this story once more information is available.