UPDATE: Power Restored After Outage to 3,700 Wauwatosa Customers

On a day that set a heat record heat for the date, some 3,700 homes and businesses on Wauwatosa's north side were without power for part of Thursday afternoon, a We Energies spokesman said.

According to Brian Manthey of the power company, by 3:30 p.m. power had been restored to all customers.

The boundaries of the outage area were approximately from North 76th to 124th streets and from West North to Hampton avenues, Manthey said.

Manthey said that power buss sections at a substation in the area failed, and that We Energies technicians were "bridging" other power sources around the failed equipment to bring power back online to all customers.

Manthey said that the near-100-degree heat and high demand may have been a contributing factor to the equipment failure but likely was not the only one.

"We won't really know until we take that equipment apart and see what happened," he said.

Grass fires near Hwy. 45 related to power problem

Two grass fires along the Hwy. 45 on-ramp from West Burleigh Street were likely related to We Energies' efforts to restore power to the area, Wauwatosa Assistant Fire Chief Jim Case said.

"We had two small grass fires," Case said, "and both have been extinguished. They may have been related to the power outage. We Energies is there, looking into it."

Case said he had been told that the utility company believed that something happened to spark the fires when power was being restored to part of the outage area.

Manthey said that such things could happen when a line is re-energized. "With that first burst of power, you could have something throwing off some sparks," he said. "And with the dry conditions, it wouldn't take much. Things are pretty crispy."

The fires did not cause any injuries or damage to property, Case said, and did not shut down traffic on Hwy. 45.

"Other than that," Case said, "we haven't had a single heat-related call, no heat-related illnesses. Apparently people got the message, they're staying put, keeping cool and keeping hydrated."