Thousands in Providence Lose Power

The power has been restored across downtown Providence, Rhode Island, after an explosion at a power station caused an outage that darkened city hall, federal and state courthouses, and businesses where thousands of people work.

Traffic lights were also out knocked out by Tuesday's outage, and fire crews had to respond to alarms throughout downtown, including in some buildings where people were trapped in elevators.

The outage throughout the downtown happened shortly after 10 a.m. and lasted until around 11:45 a.m. Around 4,500 customers were without power.

Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Desmarais told reporters there was an explosion in equipment at the Manchester Street Power Station.

National Grid spokesman David Graves says the problem started when a squirrel got into some equipment.

There were no reports of injuries.