BOTETOURT COUNTY, Va,- – A substation power plant was the cause of no power for several hours in most of Botetourt County.
Video sent to us from a viewer shows these explosions and sparks Thursday night. APCO tells us it all happened because of a tree.
There were downed power lines and the transformer sparking. We're told the transformer was damaged beyond repair and a temporary one was installed on site Friday.
Some residents close by the substation say their power came back on early Friday morning, but a family WSLS 10 spoke with were still in the dark as of 6 p.m. Friday.
Chris Deischer said he was watching television when the power went out in his neighborhood.
"I went to the front door and over the top of the houses across the street, I can actually see the blue. And it lasted long enough that I called my wife, as she came in, and she can see the big blue flashing lights. And at that time we decided to ride up and take a look at it. Of course when we got there, there was cop cars and rescue squads and stuff. I couldn't really see what was going on but my wife got to see a little bit of it," said Deischer.
According to the Appalachian Power outage map, about 550 customers were still without power in the area as of 9:45 p.m.