WASHINGTON (WUSA) -- Pepco crews have found the second underground cable failure linked to Tuesday's outage north of Union Station near North Capitol Street and are repairing it. According to Pepco, "The outage was caused by failures in underground cables that are part of a 'network' that provides power to the affected area."
Pepco expects power to be restored by midnight.
A cooling center at the Walker Jones Education Campus, 1125 New Jersey Ave., N.W. will stay open until power is restored. Pepco advises any customers who have special needs, such as special medical equipment, to activate their emergency plans.
EEOC Headquarters at 131 M Street, NE, was closed Wednesday due to power outage.
FERC Headquarters, at 888 & 1100 First Street, NE, was also closed Wednesday because all of its systems are down. According to a press release, only emergency personnel that were contacted wereto report to duty. All other personnel were on administrative leave Wednesday.
The DC bureau of CNN, FERC Headquarters and other buildings in Northeast were all without power Tuesday evening.
At CNN, Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room" had to be moved outdoors as a result of the power outage. We're told the back-up generator failed.
A man who lives in the Sibley Plaza Senior Apartments on North Capitol Street says residents were without power since the afternoon.
Some high rise buildings in the 800 block of First Street, Northeast, were also affected by the outage and some people were unable to get out of the parking garages, sources say.
A traffic signal was also out at the intersection of North Capitol and M Streets.
Alan Etter, spokesman for UDC, says the community college in Northeast is affected and classes have been cancelled for the evening.
Pepco says it appears there is damage to its underground electric system in the area but the extent of the damage has not yet been determined. It warns that the damage could be major and customers could be without power until Wednesday.
Pepco advises any customers who have special needs, such as special medical equipment, to use their emergency plans.
Earlier Tuesday evening, Pepco's Clay Anderson said there were about 1,500 customers without service in the area of 1st and K Streets, NE, and also at 1st and Pierce. One of our cameramen spotted a Pepco crew working in a manhole near 1st and L Streets NE.