Were you stuck in traffic downtown or in the dark? An outage affected thousands in Boise
Several thousand Boise residents lost power just before noon on Wednesday for about an hour, according to Idaho Power.
At 11:48 a.m., Idaho Power’s website reported that an outage began and was affecting 5,584 customers. The outage hit customers in the West End, North End and Foothills north of Military Reserve.
The cause of the outage was a “line interference” near the Boise substation downtown, and a work crew responded to the station quickly to restore power early on Wednesday afternoon, according to Melissa Thom, an Idaho Power spokesperson. At 1:06 p.m., Thom said by email that customers were being brought back online “momentarily,” and the map of the outage disappeared from the electric company’s website a few minutes later.
The outage caused problems for both government meetings and daytime commuters. The Ada County Highway District rescheduled a commission meeting for Friday afternoon after members of the public watching the meeting on Zoom lost power and were unable to attend, according to a tweet.
Downtown traffic slowed to a crawl on Front Street after some traffic lights went out, according to multiple people, including Scott Herrick, a freelance reporter.
This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 1:21 PM.
