KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An outage left residents of Odessa, Missouri, without power on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson with the city of Odessa.
By Wednesday night, city officials said the power was restored.
A Facebook post from the city said that the outage began just before 1:00 a.m. between the Evergy substation on 9th Street and the Odessa substation on Dryden Street.
"Both organizations deployed immediately to begin assessing the issue and the damage caused to the infrastructure," the post said.
The city said the cause of the outage is not known and there is not yet an estimated time for when power will be restored.
Residents couldn't buy gas on Wednesday, the traffic lights were out and the shops were closed. The power outage and heat created stillness in Odessa.
“It’s miserable,” Nancy and Michael Morris, who live in Odessa, said.
The Morris’s were in their car in the driveway with air conditioning on full blast.
“We woke up at about three o'clock, and it was extremely warm,” they said. “We’ve called and checked on everybody.”
People in Odessa have recently become subject to a number of power outages.
“We had an issue where a car hit a power line, that was the first one,” Nici Wilson, the city administrator of Odessa, said. “We were out with several hours for that one, we did have the snake issue. We had a tree limb go down on the Fourth of July, so our crews were out.”
Wilson said the recent outages in the last month have been isolated incidences.
“Nothing to do with the system in and of itself, it’s just a really bad string of bad luck,” she said.
Churches and event venues hoped to turn that so-called bad luck into action, helping others and giving people a distraction from the heat.
The outage comes amid an Excessive Heat Warning in Odessa. The city says New Horizons Presbyterian Church at 4266 MO-131 in Odessa will be opened at 8 a.m. Wednesday as a cooling center to those in need of a place to stay. Berry Acres event center at 6825 MO-131 has also opened for those in need.
"We assure you that both the City of Odessa and Evergy are working diligently along with many of our partners to restore power as quickly as possible. With the heat expected today, public safety and the safety of our crews is of the utmost importance," the city said in the statement.
The City of Odessa also said its phone system is down at this time and that the city will answer calls when it is able to.
