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Duke Energy customers endure another outage in Pinellas

About 35,000 customers lost power earlier Tuesday. That night, nearly 5,000 also found themselves without electricity.
 
About 4,000 or so Duke Energy customers in Pinellas County lost power on Tuesday night. It was the second major power outage of the day.
About 4,000 or so Duke Energy customers in Pinellas County lost power on Tuesday night. It was the second major power outage of the day. [ Duke Energy ]
Published Jan. 8, 2020|Updated Jan. 8, 2020

GULFPORT — Duke Energy customers experienced a second power blackout on Tuesday, the second one hitting at night and affecting nearly 5,000 customers in southwest Pinellas County, according to the utility’s website.

Earlier that day, about 35,000 customers in a large swath of the county from St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport to the Historic Old Northeast neighborhood lost power for nearly two hours, according to the Duke Energy online outage map.

Related: UPDATE: Power restored after nearly 35,000 in Pinellas County were without it Tuesday

A Duke Energy spokeswoman said the earlier outage was caused by issues with three substations near the St. Pete-Clearwater airport.

The second outage took place at about 8 p.m. An hour later, the company sent text messages to customers saying the second outage may have been caused by an object touching a power line.

That outage centered around the area from the coastal areas bordering the Pasadena Golf and Yacht Club north through Stetson University College of Law all the way to Central Avenue in downtown St. Petersburg.

The exact number of customers without power was 4,655 at about 9 p.m., the company said. The estimated time for power to be restored was midnight.