SHAWANO, WI- Many homes and businesses began the day Wednesday without power. Shawano Municipal Utilities reported that they had an equipment failure at their industrial substation on Richmond and Waukechon Street.

Bruce Gomm, General Manager of SMU said the issue began between 8:30 and 9:00 AM. “We did some switching to move the load to another source, and after we did that, it ended up causing more problems.”

Gomm said they are still putting the pieces together but the bigger fault caused a fire at that substation. “Once we got that under control, we did some more switching and around 9:30 AM, we were able to get everybody back on.”

He said the additional issue was an abnormal situation. “Everybody should be back in power and if they are not, they need to let us know so we can investigate.”

Click below to hear comments from Gomm about the power outage.