A large portion of Downtown Memphis reportedly lost power early Sunday morning, and Memphis' energy supplier has stated that failing equipment is the cause of these outages.
“That’s concerning,” said Lee Ann Pruitt who lives downtown, “The street was pitch black. Usually when you open up you see some sort of ambient light that lights something up…There was nothing.”
Memphis Light Gas and Water (MLGW) said at around noon that power had been successfully restored to all affected customers in the area.
A time when power would be restored to the "large portion of Downtown Memphis" is not available from the energy supplier as of press time.
MLGW said this matter is still under investigation.
While power had been restored, several businesses were forced to either delay when they opened or stay closed for the entire day. Several visitors in town like the Weyrick family told ABC24 they had to change their plans.
“We just had to switch up and we went out to the zoo, and then we couldn’t get into the civil rights museum until about 1 O’Clock today,” said Laura Weyrick who was visiting from Indianapolis.
"We certainly feel bad about the missed opportunity for us, but we also feel bad about the missed opportunity for our city," said Dr. Russ Wigginton, National Civil Rights Museum President.
Typically, outages in the city of Memphis can be checked with MLGW's outage map. As of around 11 a.m., MLGW's map, however, still read that the city of Memphis was at 99.99 percent of customers had power.
Precisely one month ago — on Sept. 8 — Downtown Memphis experienced another outage. At that time, MLGW said the outages downtown were primarily underground and could not be tracked through their online outage map.
Now, Wigginton is asking the utility company to be more transparent about how big of an issue these problems are, and communicate with downtown businesses so they can help.
“The museum and other businesses downtown stand ready to be helpful and supportive, but we do need to be in partnership and to have a clear understanding of what the challenges are,” said Wigginton.
Here is MLGW contact information for customers in the area:
- Sign up for Text Alerts: mlgw.com/textalerts
- Outage Reporting: 901-544-6500
- Emergency: 901-528-4465
- Customer Care Center: 901-544-MLGW (6549)
This is a developing story. ABC24 will update this article as more information becomes available.