CREWS RESTORE POWER, BEWILDERED BY OUTAGE

Union Electric customers northeast of the intersection of Perryville Road and Broadway were without power early Saturday morning for as long as three hours.

The cause of the power outage remains a mystery, a UE spokesman said.

The spokesman, Darrell Seabaugh, said crews were unable to determine what caused the outage which affected a large section of Cape Girardeau and a few homes in the county. The exact number of customers affected by the outage wasn't available, he said.

Many customers saw service restored within an hour after the outage was reported at 12:20 a.m., he said. Service for others was restored within three hours.

"We're not sure at this point what caused it," Seabaugh said. "My first thought was a car hitting a pole, but we found nothing to indicate that. It could've been a tree limb that just disintegrated. We couldn't find anything early this morning."

Crews worked until 8 a.m. rerouting electricity to feed the two substations that were knocked out. "We're going to keep rechecking everything until we figure out what happened," he said.

Stoplights were out at Sprigg and Broadway for almost three hours, but the Cape Girardeau Police Department didn't report any related mishaps.