Power outage has widespread effect - WAOW - Newsline 9, Wausau News, Weather, Sports

A massive power outage in Marathon County affected businesses and homeowners.

Ben Kluetz had just finished helping a customer when the gaming store he works at in Rib Mountain went dark.

"It was actually really surreal. When all the lights went out, if you looked outside there was no lights, only cars going by," he said.

He wasn't alone.

"We lost power to just short of 11,000 customers," Wausau Public Service Representative Kelly Zagrzebski said.

She told Newsline 9 a transmission switch failure was to blame for the outage.

"There were three different things that happened and basically it all comes down to that piece of equipment," Zagrzebski said.

The Culver's restaurant in Rothschild lost power before 9 o'clock p.m.

"There's usually a pretty good customer rush around 9:30 I'm sure that we missed out on that," Assistant Manager Charles Gray said. Employees there turned of the grill and other equipment to prevent a power surge.

Some other people lost power to both their home and their business. Randy Lackman, who owns Rib Mountain Cycles, said the outage happened after he closed up shop.

"By the time we got home we realized that it was bigger than just Rib Mountain. We live over in Wausau and the power was out there too," he said.

WPS officials said an outage of this size is rare.

"It's not a common occurrence, but maybe once a year, twice a year," Zagrzebski said.

Power was restored to most customers by 11 o'clock Tuesday night.