Five hours after an electrical outage Monday morning hit central Butler County, no one at West Penn Power knows the exact cause of the problem. The outage slowed work in parts of Butler and Butler and Penn townships, effecting 4,000 to 5,000 customers, said Todd Meyers, spokesman for West Penn Power. Rob Lombardo, also a company spokesman, at about 3:30 p.m. said that power had been switched to back up distribution lines and will be switched back once the problem is solved. He said workers are still looking for the original problem that caused the outage. Meyers said that about 10:30 a.m. a distribution line “seized” several substations causing the power to go out. Meyers said electric repair workers focused on re-establishing the power, which they did by about 11:30 a.m. “Unless there is something obvious, like a squirrel that may have been running around in there, we may never know,” he added. Butler County Community College closed its Butler Township campus for the day because of the outage. The campus is to reopen at 4 p.m., for evening classes. Lights at Butler Memorial Hospital and schools in the Butler School District did not go out.
