BEATRICE – Southeast Community College-Beatrice Campus has canceled classes for the day, following an early morning power outage that affected west Beatrice.

The outage occurred at around 3:45 a.m. and also took KWBE radio off the air.   Power was restored to the bulk of the area by 6:30 a.m., but some areas at the west edge of Beatrice were still without electricity afterward.  At its peak, the outage affected about 700 customers of the Beatrice Board of Public Works. City Electric Superintendent, Pat Feist said the cause was traced to a bad underground transmission line at the college, along with failure of a piece of control equipment at a nearby substation.  

The loss of power also knocked out traffic signals at the intersection of U.S. Highway 136 and Nebraska Highway 4, for several hours.  The outage also affected a traffic signal just to the east, at West Court and Penrod Streets.

When the power loss began, police officers scrambled to respond to several business alarms, going building-by-building to make sure properties were secure.