Power restored to all Columbia residents

UPDATE 6 a.m. Monday: All Columbia Water and Light customers had power, according to the outage map.

UPDATE 9:50 p.m.: As of 9:50 p.m., just one Columbia Water and Light customer remained without power, according to the outage map.

ORIGINAL: Some Columbia residents continued to lose power Sunday morning after the recent snow storm.

“Right now all of our crews are on 16 hour shifts,” Lissie Wade, the Columbia Water and Light Community Relations Specialist, said. “They began this morning a little bit before 7 a.m.”

She said the majority of the power outages are likely because of heavy snow on trees knocking down power lines. Though the majority of customers out on Sunday have not had electricity since Friday night, some new outages have occurred.

Ben Trachtenberg said he lost power around 4 a.m. Sunday morning and got it back around 2 p.m.

“I called the number the city has to report it, but I knew a bunch of people were out,” he said.

According to Wade, Columbia has already restored power to over eight thousand customers Sunday. But they have also had some help.

“Four different cities answered our call for aid,” Wade said. “They were Rolla, Waynesville, Macon and Palmyra.”

There were also a couple of contractors who helped.

Wade said she is not sure how long the cities plan to help, but she believes they will help Columbia as long as the city needs it.

“Fortunately, right now we are seeing much less people having to deal with outages,” Wade said.

Wade said if people do not call the number provided on the city’s website, Water and Light will not know if the power is out.