Charter school closes for the day, nearly 2,000 people without power after Sanford outages

Over 1,200 people are without power Thursday morning in Sanford, Lee County. 

According to the Duke Energy Outage Map, around 1,215 people are without power in areas southeast of the Jonesboro Heights area. The outage seems to be affecting neighborhoods and parts of major highways like U.S. Highway 421 and N.C. Highway 87.

The energy company stated in the alert that the outage was caused by equipment going offline around 5 a.m.

However, according to a post from Ascend Leadership Academy, a charter school just off NC-87, the outage may have been caused by an early-morning accident on the highway that involved power lines and a utility pole. The school lost power as a result, and traffic lights and businesses are also impacted. 

While the Duke Energy Outage Map says restoration is to be scheduled for 8:15 a.m., the school said their power restoration is not expected until later today. Therefore, the school announced the decision to close for the whole day Thursday. They added there will be no asynchronous learning for students. 

WRAL is working to confirm from Duke Energy if the outages are caused by a crash. We are also working to learn more when the exact restoration time will be.