FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A downed power line in Fort Lauderdale left some businesses and homes without power Tuesday morning and caused traffic issues on Broward Boulevard.
Local 10 reporter Jackie Pascale was in the area where a gas leak was also reported around 7:20 a.m.
Power was out in the area from Southeast Ninth Street to Andrews Avenue earlier in the morning, but as of 9 a.m., power had been returned to 90% of FPL customers in the area.
Power was still off, however, in a small section of downtown Fort Lauderdale, just a block away from Las Olas Boulevard.
A resident who lives in a nearby high rise shared video with Local 10 News, saying she saw a flash of light and puff of smoke.
That’s when witnesses called police and the fire department, thinking this was a transformer explosion.
But the downed power line just caused a small fire and also a gas leak.
Stop lights were out in the area and businesses were temporarily without power.
“I heard a loud explosion,” Elaine Harmych, who lost power, said.
“There’s sparks flying everywhere,” Zach Morris, the bar manager at Louie Bossi’s Ristorante Bar Pizzeria said.
And then, there was a major loss of power.
“About 15 minutes later, I heard another bang and saw my power was off,” Morris said.
Morris said he put prep work on pause until their generator could get set up.
“We don’t want to have our staff work with no AC,” he said. “We did our best to try and calm everyone down, because obviously when you come in and see that, no power, everyone was kind of freaking out.”
Nearly 1,700 FPL customers were without power at one point, but that number dwindled down to about 200 within a couple hours.
FPL crews remain in the area, making repairs.
“FPL is responding safely and quickly to restore power to customers following a downed power line in Ft. Lauderdale,” an FPL spokesperson said in a statement to Local 10 News. “The cause of the downed power line is under investigation. No one was injured.”
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