Some residents in southern Riley County and a portion of Wabaunsee County were without power for as long as 4 hours Wednesday evening.
Bluestem Electric Cooperative says the cause for the outage was burnt power lines across US Hwy 177 south of Manhattan. It impacted the Hunter Island substation as well as areas south of Manhattan. Bluestem General Manager Mike Morton tells KMAN there was actually a burnt line laying across the road for some time. Fortunately there were no injuries.
Morton says it appears it may have been the result of a lightning strike, perhaps within the past month sometime. That combined with the heat from the past several days likely caused the line to break and fail.
Crews were out stringing new lines and restored power by around 10 p.m.
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