FRANKLIN COUNTY – Several Franklin County communities were without power for over an hour Tuesday morning due to an equipment malfunction that happened around 7:50 a.m. inside Ameren Illinois’ Zeigler substation.

Ameren says 4,200 customers were without power. Communities impacted by the outage were Buckner, Christopher, Coello, Mulkeytown, Royalton, Valier and Zeigler.

Crews arrived on the scene and found the issue. Crews worked with dispatch to re-route power from other sources. All customers were restored at 9:10 a.m. Crews will run tests on the equipment to make the necessary repairs.