Why nearly 4,000 on Hilton Head were without electricity on Tuesday afternoon

Thousands on Hilton Head were without power for around two hours on a chilly Tuesday afternoon.

A failed underground wire caused the outage, according to Palmetto Electric Cooperative spokesperson Tray Hunter.

The wiring issue resulted in a substation on the middle of the island going down, causing nearly 4,000 outages.

It’s unknown at this time what caused the wire to fail, but it could be “a number of things,” he said.

Palmetto Electric linemen were focused on restoring power before researching the cause of the outages, said Hunter.

The outages began at around 2:55 p.m.

As of 4:50 p.m. power was beginning to return for homes and businesses affected, Hunter said.

This story was originally published December 27, 2022 at 5:24 PM.