Monday morning's power outage gave many downtown workers an unexpected break and Main Street was busier than usual.

A possible lightning strike may be the cause of Monday’s power outage that forced 4,400 West Penn Power customers to take a midmorning coffee break.

Rob Lombardo, spokesman for West Penn Power, said this morning that crews Monday evening found a piece of line equipment that was severely burned.

“It could have been a lightning strike that didn’t burn the equipment completely until Monday morning, then tripping a fuse at a substation, similar to the electric fuses in a house,” he said.

Lombardo said the equipment was removed and replaced, and has been sent for study to see if the actual cause of the fire can be determined.

At about 10:30 a.m. Monday, lights in parts of the city of Butler and Butler and Penn townships went out without a flicker.

Electric service was restored about 11:30 a.m. when the power company switched to a backup distribution system.

Distribution lines for the area were switched back to the regular lines during the evening, Lombardo said.

The Butler County Courthouse and Government Center, as well as the Butler County Community College were closed because of the outage, with BC3 using its emergency text messaging system to alert students and faculty to the closing.

Butler Memorial Hospital and Butler School District schools had no problems related to the outage.

Calls to AK Steel in West Chester, Ohio, to see if the Butler Works had any problems, were not returned Monday.