Thousands without power in Richmond, surrounding areas; crews assessing cause

RICHMOND, Ind. (WISH) — Thousands of people in east central Indiana are without power following a widespread outage Tuesday morning.

Richmond Power and Light shared on social media that the Richmond area, as well as Centerville, Liberty, and Hagerstown, were experiencing outages.

The post said, “We are experiencing a widespread outage. We have crews assessing. More updates to follow.”

The power company also wrote in an update that half of the system was with power as of 9:30 a.m. They also said that they were in the process of restoring circuits to other areas.

Mayor of Richmond Dave Snow said on Facebook that Richmond Power and Light informed him that the issue was not caused by the local power company, but a major transmission issue. He said, “This is a major transmission issue, and it appears as though other power agencies in surrounding cities have also lost power.”

Snow says that power was also out east of Richmond into Ohio, and restoring power to the city would “take sometime throughout the day” on Tuesday.

IU East also reported that power was out across campus. At 10 a.m. that power was back on and classed would resume at noon.

As of 1:45 p.m. a.m., only 15 people were without power. At the height of the outages, nearly 7,000 people were without power.