NC city apologizes after most homes and businesses lost power Saturday. Cause unknown.
The city of Greenville’s public utility apologized Saturday for a widespread outage whose cause remained a mystery hours after power was restored.
Most homes and businesses in the city, which has a population of about 90,800, lost electricity Saturday morning, police said in a series of alerts Saturday morning on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Power was restored within about two hours, police said.
Major power outage in the NC33/264 corridor of the city. @GUC_Info is aware. Officers are being directed to numerous intersections to direct traffic. A reminder, all unattended intersections without power should be treated as a four-way stop. pic.twitter.com/5Srr9q9Ff4
— Greenville Police (@GreenvillePD) March 23, 2024
Lights out, police direct traffic
Greenville is roughly about 85 miles southeast of Raleigh and home to East Carolina University, a 1,600 acre public institution.
Police first reported the outage at 10 a.m.
“Major power outage in the N.C. 33/264 corridor of the city,” police initially said on X.
“Officers are being directed to numerous intersections to direct traffic,” the alert by police continued. “A reminder, all unattended intersections without power should be treated as a four-way stop.”
Eight minutes later, police said the outage extended beyond the N.C. 33/264 corridor.
“Much of city impacted,” police posted on X at 10:08 a.m. “Please continue to treat all intersections as a four way stop.”
At 11:15 a.m., police said utility crews estimated restoration could take 30 minutes to several hours. “Already restored in some areas,” police said on X.
An hour later, Greenville Utilities said all residential customers had power back.
OUTAGE ALERT: Crews are assessing a widespread power outage and we will post an update very soon. pic.twitter.com/z3YfBIh8Xk
— Greenville Utilities (@GUC_Info) March 23, 2024
No update on cause
“Crews are now focused on industrial customers,” the utility posted on X.
At 2:30 p.m. Saturday, crews continued to investigate the cause, the utility posted on X. “And we have no update on the cause at this time,” the utility posted. “We apologize for any inconvenience our customers may have experienced due to this outage.”
168,000 customer connections
Greenville Utilities is owned by the residents of the city but operates under a separate charter issued by the North Carolina General Assembly, according to the Greenville Utilities Commission website.
The utility provides electricity, water, sewer and natural gas to the city and 75% of Pitt County, with a combined total of nearly 168,000 customer connections.
The utility did not say how many homes and businesses lost power and did not immediately return a message on Saturday from The Charlotte Observer.
