Nearly 2,000 people were without power Thursday morning in Sanford, Lee County. As of 2 p.m., the power has been fully restored.
According to the Duke Energy Outage Map, around 1,856 people were without power in areas southeast of the Jonesboro Heights. The outage were affecting neighborhoods and parts of major highways like U.S. Highway 421 and N.C. Highway 87.
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The energy company stated in the alert that the outage was caused by equipment going offline around 5 a.m.
According to a post from Ascend Leadership Academy, a charter school just off NC-87, the outage may have been caused by an early-morning accident on the highway that involved power lines and a utility pole. The school lost power as a result, and traffic lights and businesses are also impacted.
The original timing of the restoration was about 8:15 a.m. when the number of affected customers was at around 2,000. The power was fully restored by 2 p.m.
Ascend Leadership Academy expected their power restoration was not expected until later. Therefore, the school announced the decision to close for the whole day Thursday. They added there will be no asynchronous learning for students.
WRAL is working to confirm from Duke Energy if the outages are caused by a crash.
