School closings

ST. LOUIS (AP/KMOV) -- Power is back on for tens of thousands of people in the St. Louis area after a massive outage caused by a substation fire.

The outage began around 4:15 a.m. Tuesday and left more than 50,000 AmerenUE customers without electricity for a few hours. Power was restored by around 8 a.m.

Ameren says the fire occurred after what sounded like an explosion at its Watson substation.

According to a spokesperson for Ameren, investigators initially thought a transformer blew and caused the fire.

Now, investigators believe that the fire started in a barrel with oil in it inside the substation.

The intense heat and smoke from the blaze activated an emergency protective system and caused the substation to shutdow, leading to the massive outage.

According to the spokesperson, an Ameren employee put out the flames with a fire extinguisher.

Shrewsbury police and fire officials returned to the scene of the fire Tuesday afternoon, trying to figure out what caused that barrel to ignite.

The outage area stretched south from Clayton Road to Interstate 55 and west from Geyer Road to Kingshighway. The hardest-hit area is near the River Des Peres in the south St. Louis area.

More than a dozen schools canceled or delayed start times due to the outage. Also, morning commuters were delayed by darkened traffic lights.

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Ameren: http://www.ameren.com/Outage/ADC--RS--StormCenter.asp

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)