Power outage hits east Salt Lake City after rain, lightning storm

About 300 Salt Lake City homes were in the dark late into Thursday night after a lightning storm passed through the valley and knocked out the power.

The outage began at 3:26 p.m. and initially affected 3,100 homes between 200 South, 900 South, 300 East and 1100 East, according to Rocky Mountain Power spokesman David Eskelsen. By 7:24 p.m., all but 300 of the homes had power again. Crews continued patrolling lines trying to locate the cause of the remaining outage Thursday evening.

Officials hoped to have electricity running to the remaining homes by midnight, according to Margaret Ohler, a RMP spokeswoman.

Eskelsen explained that the outage started after a circuit flipped at Salt Lake City substation. The circuit is similar in function to the ones in a home, but are the size of a truck, and are designed to prevent damage to the overall system.

Crews hoped to have all power restored by late Thursday night.

jdalrymple@sltrib.com

Twitter: @jimmycdii