Beacon Journal staff report
A portion of downtown Akron was without power Monday morning because of a fire at a downtown building on Market Street near Main Street, officials said.
FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin said the utility company was asked to disconnect power to the building and that resulted in nearly 230 downtown customers losing power as well. The utility had to shut down power at a substation because the smoke was too heavy inside a manhole at the building and utility workers couldn’t get inside.
Power was restored to the majority of customers just before 10:30 a.m., but some customers immediately around the building were still affected, Durbin said.
A fire spokesman said authorities are battling an underground electrical fire.
The outage affected traffic lights and the city had asked motorists to treat non-working street lights as four-way stops.
Akron Municipal Court offices were closed for the day due to the outage, as a security precaution, the city said. Any Akron Municipal Court matter scheduled for Monday will be rescheduled.
The court asked people to contact staff Tuesday at 330-375-2120 for more information regarding rescheduled dates.
Check back on Ohio.com for updates.