A power outage Wednesday morning affected parts of western and downtown Hays.

Midwest Energy spokesman Mike Morley says the outage was reported just before 9 a.m. and was caused by a switch that failed on a pole along the Highway 183 Bypass. About 500 customers were affected.

The failed part was replaced and power was restored to all customers by 10:30.

The outage affected Eagle Communications, which caused a disruption in television and internet service.

Travis Kohlrus, Eagle Broadband General Manager told Hays Post, “Our team was at our network operations center when the power outage occurred.  Backup power held the load for approximately 15 minutes, however a relay switch in Eagle’s back up generator did not function properly to take over the complete load.  After 5 minutes of downtime, we were able to provide backup power from the generator until commercial power was restored.

Customers with wireless Internet devices in their homes may need to reboot them. If they are still having problems, they are encouraged to contact Eagle Customer Service toll free  1-877.613.2453.”