Some 10,000 in Midlands lose power Wednesday

An estimated 10,000 customers scattered throughout Richland and Lexington counties were without power Wednesday afternoon.

The outages, which hit as temperatures climbed into the upper 90s by mid- to late afternoon, were caused by "an equipment failure in the infrastructure, specifically a failed insulator on a pole that channels power to a large number of people," said SCE&G spokesman Eric Boomhower.

Many of the customers were in St. Andrews and West Columbia areas, according to SCE&G outage maps.

The somewhat random nature of the outages were a coincidence, Boomhower said. There was nothing to link one outage to another such as instability in the system, he added.

The Richland County Library downtown was one of the larger downtown institutions affected by the outage.

The library relied on emergency generators to keep air handlers running and provide minimal lighting.

"Thanks to our generator we were able to safely stay open during the afternoon to provide customers with access to physical resources," said Georgia Coleman, director of library experience. "Staff was able to check out items manually so there was limited disruption for our customers."

By 5:30 p.m. temperatures were still comfortable inside the library, though power had remained out for several hours.

Limited checkouts were available to patrons who had their library cards before the library announced that it would close at 6 p.m.

Amie Cooper of Irmo and her four children were among those making quick work for their book selections, as they checked out nearly a dozen books.

"I was surprised the checkout was still working," Cooper said, adding her family had made their selections in about 20 minutes.

"This is probably a record time," she said.

As of 6:30 p.m., power had been restored to most customers. SCE&G 's outage map indicated 120 customers in Richland County and 32 in Lexington County still without power.

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 3:10 PM.