LEESBURG, Fla. — After spending most of Tuesday night without power, thousands of Leesburg residents are glad to have electricity again.
Much of the city went dark after a lightning strike caused a fire at a power station, officials said.
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By 9:30 p.m., the city reported that power to customers served by two of its three distribution stations knocked offline in the incident had been restored.
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But customers served by the city’s east substation — mainly in and around downtown Leesburg — remained in the dark a few hours longer.
On social media, officials confirmed that the remaining outages were restored shortly after midnight.
According to Leesburg Fire Rescue, the east power substation on U.S. 441 suffered fire damage when lightning struck Duke Florida’s transmission system around 7:30 p.m.
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The system, which feeds a majority of Leesburg power, went offline and caused the widespread outage.
About 12,600 Leesburg customers were without power initially, city officials said.
Parts of Fruitland park were also affected by the outage.
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Extra Leesburg police officers were called in to help direct motorists at intersections with inoperable traffic signals.
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