WEST SIDE OF CITY HIT BY POWER OUTAGE

West Park Mall and Doctors' Park were among several Cape Girardeau businesses without power for about two hours Monday afternoon.

The power outage started at 12:10 and ended shortly after 2 p.m., said Mike Cleary, a spokesman for AmerenUE.

The outage affected 167 customers on the city's west side, Cleary said.

The outage was blamed on a faulty underground feeder circuit, he said.

"Once we located the section of underground circuit where the failure was, we were able to fix it," Cleary said. "We had everybody back up within a couple of hours."

Customers prefer underground circuits because they are more attractive than overhead power lines, he said. But repairing the underground circuits can take some time.

"It can be harder to find. When it's above ground, you can just go down the road and look. Underground, you have to test one section at a time," Cleary said.

Jim Govro, West Park Mall manager, said power was out to about half of the mall's tenants.

"Thank goodness it was on a Monday when things were kind of slow," he said. "We might have missed a little bit of business at lunch. But Monday evenings things really pick up with people coming in after work. But we were back up in time."