Conductor failure leaves 17,000 people without power in Santa Cruz County
A power outage was creating water supply issues in Santa Cruz County.
At about 4 a.m. on Wednesday, a conductor failure disabled the transmission line that connects Santa Cruz County to the regional energy grid, utility services providers UniSource and Liberty Utilities said.
At its peak, the outage impacted 20,000 residents. As of Wednesday afternoon, about 17,000 people were still impacted. The failure occurred in an area with limited access to the heavy equipment needed to make repairs, which is slowing the restoration operations.
UniSource said its employees were working to restore power, and Liberty Utilities asked customers to conserve water as much as possible in the meantime.
City of Nogales offices were closed until power was restored, while Police and Fire Departments remained open, the Nogales Police Department said in a tweet.
UniSource was trying to restore service using power from local generators in Nogales and a lower-voltage link to Tucson Electric Power’s subtransmission system in southern Pima County.
Those who live further away from these resources will remain out of service until the transmission line is repaired, UniSource said.
Customers who have any questions can call the company at 877-837-4968. For the latest updates, UniSource is providing an Outage Map on their website.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Outage leaves 17,000in Santa Cruz County without power
