Alliance was in the dark for over four hours Tuesday morning, and close to eight thousand customers in Scottsbluff and Terrrytown were without power for at least thirty minutes early this morning. Alliance City Manager Pam Caskie says the trouble started at 2:15 a.m. when the Western Area Power Agency (WAPA) feeder substation one mile west of Alliance developed problems that impacted all of the panhandle.

“We were told it not only took out our power, but portions of the panhandle also went black,” she said. “WAPA officials identified the problem as actually being in our West Tenth Street Substation and they were able to power back to the rest of the panhandle.”

However, problems continued at the West Tenth Street Substation and city electric crews worked throughout the early morning hours to get electricity back to the city. Power to portions of Alliance was restored by 6:30 a.m., and the entire City was restored by 7:30 a.m.

Hemingford was without power for two hours. Terrytown was without power for as long as three hours. The western and northern sides of Scottsbluff were without juice for approximately a half hour impacting over 7,600 customers.Chadron was apparently unaffected by the outage.

The outage caused both the Alliance Public Schools and St. Agnes Academy to delay the start of classes until 10 a.m. The Box Butte County Courthouse will also open at 10 a.m.