Short Power Outage Due to Emergency Repair

Thousands of East Lansing customers of the Lansing Board of Water and Light (BWL) experienced a short power outage today. BWL says the outage was due to emergency repair needs in the area.

According to Steve Serkaian, Executive Director of Public Affairs for BWL, "We had an unplanned equipment issue to quickly address at a substation that serves E. Lansing customers. We used social media and traditional media to inform our customers as well as contacting E. Lansing leaders. We’re pleased that the outage lasted only 8 minutes and apologize for any customer inconvenience."

An alert about the outage went out on social media, including through Nixle, the emergency notification system used by Ingham County area emergency services. ELi also sent notice to East Lansing residents through its Twitter and Facebook accounts.

On Twitter, a reader asked why the BWL outage system wasn't used to alert people in advance of the outage, when Nixle was advising people. When we forwarded this reader question to BWL on Twitter, BWL responded, "The advisory has been posted on the Outage Center and should load to our website momentarily."

You can sign up for Nixle alerts here: https://local.nixle.com/register/

The BWL outage center is here: https://www.lbwl.com/outagecenter/