ROANOKE (WSLS 10) - Power has been restored to all Appalachian Power customer's affected by Thursday's outage.
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Roanoke Fire-EMS responded to reports of smoke in an underground manhole in downtown Roanoke on Thursday afternoon. AEP has not confirmed if a fire actually happened.
This underground cable issue, which started at about 11:45 a.m., affected AEP's underground network that provides electricity to downtown Roanoke.
Both the Carilion Administrative Services Building, at 213 S Jefferson Street, and the old Heironimus building lost power.
At one point on Thursday, power was going to be shut off from 3rd Street to Williamson and Elm Avenue to Norfolk Avenue, but that was not needed.
"There was a pretty loud explosion and basically there was smoke everywhere. Our mechanical duct bank is fed through that and the smoke started infiltrating our building," said Melissa Pritchard with SFCS Architects who had to evacuate her building.
A reverse 911 call was sent out saying people will not be shut down to other businesses.
AEP said crews are currently working to determine the exact cause of the problem and no one was hurt.
Roanoke Fire - EMS Chief David Hoback said 600 people were affected.