30th Street Station in Philadelphia. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
This story originally appeared on 6abc.
An underground fire caused a blackout in Philadelphia’s University City section Tuesday morning.
Around 4:15 a.m., PECO said it was experiencing an issue with underground cables near 31st and Market streets, according to the company.
Officials said the underground cables overheated and caught fire.
The fire caused a manhole cover to explode, cutting power for two blocks, according to officials. PECO said roughly 500 customers in the University City area and parts of Center City were impacted.
30th Street Station is also impacted. Officials there told Action News they are operating on a backup generator and that trains are running.
“PECO crews have been working to isolate the damaged area and restore service for customers where possible,” PECO said in an email to Action News.
Around 6:30 a.m., PECO said they were able to isolate much of the damage and restore service to most customers, adding that as of 8:40 a.m., only 13 customers were still being impacted by the outage.
Crews are working to determine the extent of damage and when service will be restored for all customers.
Some lanes of traffic are blocked on Market Street.
There have been no reports of injuries.