People on the east side of Casper were inconvenienced by a couple of power outages Wednesday. Jeff Hymas, with Rocky Mountain Power, says the first outage lasted for about 11 minutes.

First power outage, brief, cause unknown:

"There was a power outage on Wednesday afternoon that affected nearly 3,600 customers, primarily in the southeast part of Casper. The outage began at 2:46 pm, and power was restored within about 11 minutes. And we are still in the process of investigating to determine what caused the outage."

Mr. Hymas said they know what the cause of the second power outage.

Second power outage, same area:

"There was a second power outage that affected many of the same customers in the southeast part of Casper who were without power briefly, earlier. The second one started at 3:35 pm and affected about 2,800 customers. And what happened is a contract crew was working out on a power-line and had a problem where some conductor fell, some line, and that caused our circuit breaker to open at the substation and cut the flow of power. So this outage lasted about 14 minutes. The earlier one lasted about 11 minutes, and we're still investigating the cause of the first outage."

And, as we get into winter months, says Hymas, it's a good time to prepare for problems like this.

Preparedness helps weather storms:

"And the outage affected all of our customers served out of the same substation, our Elkhorn Substation, which is in the southeast part of Casper. With winter weather on its way, it's important for our customers to prepare in advance for outages or any other emergencies and we have a lot of other useful information on our website, rockymountainpower.net, about how to prepare for outages and how to stay safe when they happen."

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