COLUMBIA, S.C. — A large power outage in downtown Columbia Tuesday briefly caused some problems for people and businesses in the area.
News19 first began getting reports just after 2 p.m. Tuesday of a problem. The Columbia Police Department put on social media that the issue was due to a transformer problem in the 900 block of Lady Street. The issue caused traffic lights to lose power at Main and Sumter Street and from Gervais Street to Hampton Streets. News19 also got reports that some buildings were also without electricity.
Dominion later said in a statement to News19 that a bird made contact with their substation on Lady Street, triggering the outage. About 500 customers were affected.
Shortly after the lights went out, multiple Dominion Energy staff were seen working at the Lady Street location to fix the problem. By just after 3 p.m., the lights were restored.