Power outage

A damaged underground power cable left about 1,900 customers without power for about 40 minutes Monday morning in downtown Odessa.

Sue Mercer, area manager for Oncor Electric Delivery, said the outage began between Lee Avenue and Grant Avenue on Sixth Street just after 9:30 a.m. The outage was 95 percent fixed by 10:17 a.m., when much of the area’s power flow was rerouted through other cables and service was restored.

The cable was damaged in an area where local company Key Enterprises was working under contract with the city to replace a waterline.

Representatives at Key Enterprises, however, refused to comment.

Among the largest entities affected were the Ector County Independent School District, the Investment Corporation of America and Odessa Regional Medical Center, Mercer said.

ORMC spokeswoman Jacqui Gore said the hospital’s emergency generators turned on immediately following the outage, and patients were not impacted whatsoever.

Cpl. Sherrie Carruth with the Odessa Police Department said police were dispatched to direct traffic in 13 intersections with offline traffic lights.

Carruth, city spokeswoman Andrea Goodson and other officials said no injuries and no deaths were reported.

While not exactly common, Mercer said, outages such as these occur “periodically,” especially during severe heat or cold.

“It’s not like a once-a-year event or anything like that,” Mercer said. “It’s more common than that, but it’s not multiple times a day, either.”