Fire At PECO Substation In Philadelphia Causing Thousands Of Outages

Thousands of PECO customers are without power as a fire burns at a substation in Philadelphia.

PECO is reporting about 18,200 customers are in the dark due to a fire at the Nicetown-Tioga substation on West Westmoreland Street.

Stay up to date with outages and projected restoration time frames on PECO's outage map online here.

The NBc10 reports the fire started at about 2:05 p.m.

No attack by firefighters yet of PECO substation. Burns uncontrollable, causing power outage in large section of NW Philadelphia. pic.twitter.com/08t46hSGNs
— Bastiaan Slabbers (@BasSlabbers) March 7, 2017

The city is warning drivers of traffic lights that are affected by the outage.

Drivers advised to use caution during PECO outage. @PhilaStreets currently placing generators at major intersections & stop signs at others.
— City of Philadelphia (@PhiladelphiaGov) March 7, 2017

The city has also closed streets in the area of the fire.

Crews have been using chemicals and fire suppression equipment instead of water on the fire due to it being an electrical fire, NBC 1o reports.

One apartment building near the fire was evacuated, 6ABC reports.

Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel told 6ABC that customers should not expect power to return anytime soon.