UNION CITY, MI (WTVB) – The power was restored in Union City at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night, almost nine hours after an electrical explosion inside the Village of Union City’s DPW/Electric building caused the power to go out in the entire village.
No injuries were reported but major damage was reported to the substation at 106 Coldwater Road.
Village officials say the explosion which was reported at about 1:30 p.m. took out the main switch gear for the Village’s electrical system resulting in the entire Village’s electric grid to go down.
Village Manager and Police Chief Chris Mathis says they do not know what caused it to fail or to fail in such a catastrophic way but nothing nefarious is suspected.
Several crew members and a guest were in the building when the explosion took place but they were all in adjacent rooms and nobody was hurt.
Two responding firefighters did have some minor overheating issues while fighting the fire.
Mathis says all power has been restored via a temporary solution to a major malfunction. Over the next few days, Union City crews and others will be working towards a permanent solution but the work will require intentional outages.
Union City firefighters were initially dispatched. Mutual aide was provided from the Burlington Fire Department. The fire was called under control at about 2:35 p.m..
Crews cleared the scene at around 3:50 p.m.
(Photo of the main line into the switchgear that caused the failure courtesy of Village of Union City Facebook page)
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