Power restored to Richmond Power & Light customers following car accident Tuesday morning - Palladium-Item

Power restored to Richmond Power & Light customers following car accident Tuesday morning
Evan Weaver

RICHMOND, Ind. — A car accident in the region caused more than 12,000 Richmond Power & Light customers to be without power in the area Tuesday morning.

At 7:59 a.m., Richmond Power & Light said in a Facebook post that it was isolating their system from an outside source that was experiencing problems, adding that it appeared that half of the system was with power and that they were working on restoring circuits to other areas.

In an update in the same post, RP&L said that a car that hit a large transmission line that is linked to electric systems across the area was the cause of the power outage affecting the region, including Centerville, Liberty and Hagerstown among others.

The outage led to Richmond Community Schools issuing a Facebook post with after it was affected, saying at 9:25 a.m. that they were forced to dismiss all RCS schools early Tuesday.

"With the uncertainty of power to our schools, we are forced to dismiss all RCS schools early today. All 7th-12th grade bus riders will be taken home via school bus. All PreK-6th grade students will need to be picked up by a parent/guardian."

In a post at 9:42 a.m., RCS issued a statement for parents and guardians, saying that if they have a 7th through 12th grade student in an afterschool program they will need to ride the bus home or be picked up at their school.

As of 10:34 a.m., all power was restored to customers, according to an update to Richmond Power & Light's Facebook post.