Friday’s power outage in Central Columbia caused by balloons

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

A power outage that impacted nearly 2,200 Columbia electricity customers on Friday was caused by balloons.

City Utilities spokesman Jason West told ABC 17 News in an email that it was caused by “a few balloons that drifted away from their owner and got caught in the wrong spot of a power line. This set off part of a fail-safe system which is part of the electrical grid. This system helps protect the grid against massive failures.”

The outage was reported at 5:41 p.m. and power was restored by 7:18 p.m. The outage impacted 2,178 customers.