Downtown Jefferson City briefly goes dark

January 19, 2017 at 4:03 a.m. | Updated January 19, 2017 at 4:04 p.m.

Keith Arnel with Facilities Management can be seen through the shattered rear window of a car. He holds a handful of ceramic pieces while contacting a co-worker to clean up the broken vehicle glass on the state parking lot. An insulator on an Ameren Electric power line located just below St. Peter School exploded Wednesday afternoon, sounding like a small explosion and sending pieces of ceramic insulator flying more than 150 feet through the air. One chunk hit this vehicle window, shattering it.
Keith Arnel with Facilities Management can be seen through the shattered rear window of a car. He holds a handful of ceramic pieces while contacting a co-worker to clean up the broken vehicle glass on the state parking lot. An insulator on an Ameren Electric power line located just below St. Peter School exploded Wednesday afternoon, sounding like a small explosion and sending pieces of ceramic insulator flying more than 150 feet through the air. One chunk hit this vehicle window, shattering it.

An insulator failing on an electrical line caused power to flicker for a few seconds at downtown Jefferson City businesses Wednesday afternoon.

Firefighters were called to the transformer, located near the St. Peter Interparish Catholic School at Broadway and High streets, at 3:48 p.m., according to Jefferson City Fire Department reports.

Traffic signals were knocked off their cycles, and a fire alarm was set off at the Central Bank offices on Madison Street.

Although no injuries were reported, at least one vehicle was damaged by debris.

Ameren Missouri officials said their electrical system detected something was wrong and was able to switch to another power source so the flow of electricity was only briefly affected.

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