JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – For two mornings in a row, JEA customers in parts of Downtown, Springfield and the Eastside have experienced power outages. More than 2,000 customers have been affected. A JEA spokesperson says they are aware of the ongoing outages and are looking into it but there’s no word on what’s causing the outages.
Businesses were also affected. Uptown Kitchen lost money when their power went out and they were not able to serve customers.
“This is a reoccurring problem. They haven’t told us why. They haven’t figured it out. The power comes on. It goes back off,” Uptown Kitchen manager Ryan Adsem said.
Some shipping companies in Tallyrand were also dealing with no power. An employee told News4JAX that at one point, there was a line of semitrucks waiting to inside the fate because the loss of electricity caused the gate to remain locked.
Affected residents voiced their frustrations with the random outages.
“Yesterday and today, I have lost three hours between calling to work and coordinating things,” Chary Rodriguez said.
Adsem said the outages caused his business to lose thousands of dollars.
“We’ve had multiple, last week, yesterday, and today, where power went out for hours. Every time that happens, not only do we have to stop accepting new guests; but the guests we do have, it’s such a havoc trying to figure out how we are going to cash them out or how we’re going to get their food out,” he said.
An employee at a nearby gas station said the outages were also “making it impossible for people to get gas.”
When News4JAX asked JEA what was causing the outages that were impacting so many people, the electric utility company replied:
“We work every day at Jea to provide reliable services to our customers. This is important to us. We are aware there have been outages recently in Springfield, parts of downtown, and the Eastside. We’re working to identify the root cause and address the issue,” JEA spokesperson Karen Mcallister said.
Here’s the link to check JEA outages in your neighborhood