Fire at power plant causes outages

Wimberley residents briefly lost power this week after a transformer caught on fire at a local Pedernales Electric Cooperative power plant, according to Wimberley Fire Chief Carroll Czichos.

The outage, which took place on the morning of Monday, June 5, affected approximately 4,500 meters,and power was restored in about 14 minutes.

“On June 5 at 6:41 a.m. some PEC members in Hays County experienced a temporary outage due to a piece of equipment that malfunctioned and caused a small fire inside a substation,” PEC said in a statement. “We are looking into the cause to ensure that our system remains as safe and reliable as possible.”

Czichos said incidents like these are not uncommon during periods of wet weather and speculated that was the likely cause of Monday’s fire.

No injuries or damages to private property were reported.