After an underground fire caused a partial downtown blackout on Monday, Colorado Springs Utilities crews were able to restore more than 50% of the metered customers that lost power.

But the restoration efforts hit a bit of a snag on Tuesday, according to Utilities officials. As of 8 p.m. on Monday, crews had restored power to 130 of the 280 affected customers. By 4 p.m. Tuesday – 20 hours later – that number had only risen to 150.

“We do hope to have a majority of customers restored by approximately 7 p.m. (Tuesday), however this will not be everyone,” Utilities spokesman Steve Berry said in an email. “There will likely still be some affected customers out of service into (Wednesday) morning due to the complexity of restoration efforts.”

Two day crews, and two overnight crews – roughly 37 employees – were actively involved in the on-site restoration efforts, Berry said.

The Gazette saw crews Tuesday morning mainly conducting work on East Kiowa Street, near the downtown Metro Transit Center. 

“We’re currently focused on restoring customers north of Kiowa and City Hall to the east,” Berry said.

Traffic lights at Kiowa Street, Nevada Avenue, Tejon Street and Weber Street were expected to be functioning Tuesday, with Utilities working to collect temporary stop signs from the intersections. 

“Customers should treat dark or flashing traffic signals as 4-way stops,” Berry advised. 

The fire broke out just after 2:30 a.m. Monday, according to officials. Firefighters received calls reporting an underground fire shooting flames up through manholes on Kiowa, between Tejon and Nevada.

“The nature of this particular incident is fairly unique in that the point of failure had a cascading effect ‘down the line’ that created a very visual scene in the downtown area,” Berry told the Gazette on Monday. “Normally, a failure on an underground system isn’t quite as dramatic.”

Downtown restaurants were among the most impacted by the power outage.

As of Tuesday morning, Stir Coffee and Einstein Bros. Bagels, both located on Tejon Street, remained closed due to lost power. 

Solar Roast Coffee in the same area reopened Tuesday morning, but no food was being served because of Monday’s inventory that was spoiled and had to be thrown out. 

“The fridges were down yesterday, so today we don’t have any food, but that’s basically it,” Solar Roast employee Jazz Sanchez said. 

Kevin Megyeri, owner of downtown restaurants Bambino’s Urban Pizza and Skirted Heifer, on Monday said the outage was affecting the operations of many eateries that receive food deliveries on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Megyeri said a rented flatbed refrigeration unit was keeping his food stores afloat for now, but that he’s worried about how more than a day’s closure could affect his 55 employees.

“Today’s (Monday) going to be a hard one for us, and if it lasts longer than today, it’s going to get rough really quickly,” he said. “Restaurants survive on slim, slim profit margins, so we can’t afford a whole bunch of down time.”

Megyeri said he offered space on the refrigeration unit to nearby restaurants on his block, but many others could be scrambling to save food.

According to Skirted Heifer Manager Holly Azamo, the restaurant faced an increased cost to operate Tuesday in both labor and the mobile refrigeration unit the restaurant rented to store food while the power was out. 

Azamo said the restaurant will be back to “business as usual” by Wednesday.

Phil Duhon, operations manager of the newly-opened Avenue 19 on Tejon, said the restaurant was up and running on Tuesday after being closed the day before.

“We moved a lot of product out to our partner hotels, and we were able to get it back in this morning and get up and running, so we only lost one business day,” said Duhon, who noted that about 10% of the restaurant’s perishables were lost.

Burnt Toast, Duhon’s breakfast eatery on Nevada Avenue, was still shut down on Tuesday, he said.

“The big sufferer in all this is the staff,” Duhon said. “They get their hours cut, so they won’t get paid as much. So this affects them more than it affects us.”

Social media posts from the Rabbit Hole and Famous Steakhouse indicated that the restaurants would be closed until further notice.

The underground blaze blew the cover of one manhole into the air on Monday, though the manholes “actually did their job” by relieving pressure to avoid pavement and system collapse, said Colorado Springs Fire Department spokesperson Ashley Franco. 

As crews worked to restore power Tuesday morning, sidewalks on Kiowa, between Tejon and Nevada, were expected to remain closed throughout the day for the safety of workers and the general public.

Colorado Springs Utilities is still investigating the cause of the fire.

For customers looking for updates related to the downtown outage, Click or Tap Here.