A faulty substation owned by the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority (OMPA) caused disruption in electric service to portions of Purcell last Thursday, April 2.

The outage impacted numerous residential and commercial customers, mainly confined to the northwest portions of town including Purcell Elementary and High School. The internet was knocked out at the junior high school.

Teachers used flashlights to continue instruction at the elementary while high school students were kept in their sixth hour classrooms where they were at the time of the outage.

Athletes who had games were released at 2:30 and then they released students one class at a time so everyone was safe. Buses ran on their normal times.

Among other areas affected were the Christian Addition, Woodbrook, and north 9th Avenue.

The outage began about 2 p.m. with power restored at 3:48 p.m.

City officials said the outage occurred due to metering equipment inside the substation, which is not owned by the city.

To restore service, OMPA isolated the faulty equipment and performed switching procedures to restore power.

That allowed customers to be served by a secondary transformer within the substation.