Thousands Impacted by Tuesday Power Failure in Richland

(Richland, WA) -- All power has been restored, but around 12,500 customers lost electricity in Richland Tuesday afternoon, after a Bonneville Power Administration transmission line serving three Richland substations tripped and caused the outage around 4:30 pm Tuesday. According to a statement from the City of Richland, BPA responded immediately and restored service within 40 min. to the customers affected. In the statement, the city says the initial information they received about a fire within a substation was inaccurate. A small grass fire near a substation caused by an electrical arc did not cause the outage and was quickly extinguished.