UPDATE: 21,000 BGE Customers had their power restored by BGE as of 8 pm on Thursday night. The gas and electric company says the outages have been attributed to the failure of equipment.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Emergency crews are working to restore power to thousands in the City of Annapolis on Thursday afternoon.

Annapolis Emergency Management says that at 3:15 pm an estimated 72,000 customers in Annapolis began to experience a power outage.

Members of the Annapolis Fire Department and BGE are collaborating to find work on bringing back power to residents.

BGE believes the outage started at the Cedar Park substation and has affected the Annapolis peninsula and surrounding communities.

Officials say, they have received reports about broken traffic lights and that Annapolis residents should use extreme caution while driving in the area and to treat all intersections as a four-way stop.

Nick Alexopulos, spokesperson for BGE released the following statement:

At 3:15 p.m. an equipment failure impacted a large part of Anne Arundel County, causing more than 72,000 BGE customers to lose electric service. BGE crews are currently working as quickly and safely as possible to determine the cause of the equipment failure and an estimated time of restoration for customers who remain without power. We are fully mobilized and working multiple paths--from crews on the ground to automated distribution equipment--to resolve the issue. We expect to restore service for all impacted customers later this evening. We appreciate customers' patience as we address this issue