A burnt transformer wire in Hays caused over 5,000 customers in Ellis County to lose electrical service for over an hour in Hays and surrounding areas.

Most of downtown Hays was effected and members of the Hays Police Department were directing traffic in the area.

By 11:45 a.m. crews had identified the problem and had restored power to at least 1,000 customers.

“Crews are working to repair a burnt wire at the Hays substation; one transformer is back up and we are working on the other. As of 11:45, 4,000 are without power. Thanks for your patience as we work to restore power to all safely,” according to the midwest energy facebook page.

At 11:58 a.m. Midwest Energy was reporting power had been restored to most of Hays and crews are continuing work to restore power to everyone effected. The cause of the outage was a burnt wire between transformers that was designed to fail in case of system problems, in order to prevent damage to transformers. The system worked as designed according to Mike Morley, spokesman for Midwest energy.

At 12:06 p.m. the Midwest Energy facebook page was reporting full power had been restored.

At 12:20 p.m. Morley confirmed full power had been restored and thanked everyone for their patience through the incident.