A Rocky Mountain Power spokeswoman says power was restored to all Laramie customers by 4:48 p.m. Tuesday after 4,748 customers lost power the night before.

Margaret Oler says power was restored in two stages, at 4:46 p.m. and 4:48 p.m. respectively, after crews worked all night and all day to make repairs.

“Our linemen know how much people depend on electricity, and that is their goal – get electricity restored to customers as soon as possible,” says Oler.

According to Oler, the 2,678 customers that were without power for roughly 19 hours were closest to the damage, and crews had no way to provide them with alternate power. Over 2,000 customers received power from an alternate source beginning at 5:40 a.m. Tuesday.

Those customers lost power again for a time as repairs were completed and the original source was restored.

Customers lost electricity after a power pole caught fire around 10 p.m. Monday, evidently due to a lightning strike. Laramie firefighters extinguished the blaze within minutes, but that was just the beginning.

Linemen were called down from Casper to assist local crews in disconnecting the damaged power pole, removing it, and installing a new one. But their task was far from simple.

“Sometimes you’ll have a pole with a line on it, and that’s all there is,” says Oler. “Other times, there are more than one line or there’s additional equipment and such. And in this instance, there was additional equipment on that pole.”

Oler says crews worked to restore power as quickly as possible while taking necessary safety precautions and following protocol.

“We really appreciate everyone’s patience as we’ve worked through this,” says Oler. “I know it’s been a long episode for some folks.”

“It’s a good reminder to all of us that we should have emergency supplies ready in the event of an outage any time of year,” says Oler.

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