Lexington, KY - The final major blast at the site of CentrePointe's construction timed up with a power outage that affected 1,148 customers in the downtown area according to Kentucky Utilities' website.
"We don’t know definitely yet, but we at least think we can attribute that outage to the blast," said KU spokesman Cliff Feltham about the outage that occurred shortly before 10 a.m. The outage happened at the same time as the final in a series of scheduled blasts into the bedrock at the site of the planned CentrePointe project in downtown Lexington.
A downtown substation across Limestone and Vine from the blast site shutdown according to protocol due to vibrations that caused it to feel “an anomaly in the system.” Power has been restored to the whole of downtown and some surrounding affected neighborhoods, Feltham said.
Blasting on the site began on March 17 and has continued regularly since as crews dig out a hole for a three-story underground parking structure to serve an office building, restaurant, two hotels and an apartment building on the block above.
Developer Dudley Webb, who was in his office atop the Lexington Financial Center at the time of the blast, said his office was unaffected by the outage, but was checking with contractors to find out more.
"There’s a big transformer across the street from there," Webb said. "Surprisingly its one of the lightest blasts," of the series.
The outage knocked a "handful" of calls off the city's E-911 system according to Brenna Angel, a spokeswoman for Mayor Jim Gray. Lights at the city's Government Center flickered at the time of the blast, Angel said, but backup generators never needed to kick on. Phones at the seat of city government, however, were out for around five minutes.
The same was true for calls to the police non-emergency line, Angel said, as phones were out for three to five minutes as power was affected at police headquarters.
Power was quickly restored to parts of downtown, according to KU's Feltham. "We’re rerouting and shifting the load or attempting to shift the load and figuring out what the heck is going on here," Feltham said within 30 minutes of the outage. All affected had power restored before noon.
The outages spread from Upper at Vine and Main Streets east to the Woodland Park neighborhood, according to Feltham. Workers will be on site at the substation to bring it back online and to determine if there was any damage to the system.