Anchorage

Power restored after morning outage in East High area; some ASD buses delayed

A power outage knocked traffic lights offline and slowed drivers in parts of East Anchorage for about an hour Tuesday morning, and school buses will be delayed up to 15 minutes, officials said.

Municipal Light and Power spokeswoman Julie Harris said power to hundreds of customers affected by the outage, which began at about 7:15 a.m. near Northern Lights Boulevard and Bragaw Street, was restored by about 8:15 a.m.

Crews didn't immediately have word on the outage's cause.

"We isolated it to a specific switch cabinet, but we don't know what the issue is," Harris said.

Anchorage School District spokeswoman Patti Layou said the outage did affect East High and will have lingering effects on morning school buses Tuesday.

"We did send out a robocall because buses will be running 10 to 15 minutes late on the east side of town," Layou said.

East High's principal, Sam Spinella, said classes were resuming as usual Tuesday after slight delays due to the outage. He said the lost time would be made up at the end of the day's class periods.

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"The only thing we had in the building were emergency lights," Spinella said. "Fortunately the kids behaved very well -- I'm very proud of how the kids behaved."

Police spokeswoman Jennifer Castro said officers responded to a collision near East 19th Avenue and Bragaw Street at about 7:15 a.m. While lights in the area were affected by the outage, Castro said they weren't a factor in the crash.

"It's just minor injuries and it's not blocking traffic," Castro said. "That's separate of the outages."

Harris encouraged any ML&P customers still without power to call the utility's outage hotline at 279-7671.

"We believe that everyone is back on but we want to make absolutely sure," Harris said.

Chris Klint

Chris Klint is a former ADN reporter who covered breaking news.

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