An early morning power outage Saturday that left around 30 percent of Knox County residents without power for a couple of hours was caused by a “mechanical failure” in an area sub-station.
That’s according to Ameren spokeswoman Stacey Shangraw, who says the power company still isn’t exactly sure why the malfunction occurred.
However, Shangraw has ruled out a couple of possibilities. She says an animal did not cause the disruption, nor did any criminal action like “power stealing.”
More than 7,000 Knox County residents were without power between 2 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., Saturday. Outages were widespread, ranging from Galesburg to Knoxville and other area communities.
About 1, 200 Henry County residents were without power as well.