A large number of Brookhaven residents came to work Monday todarkened offices and failing traffic lights after a mechanicalfailure caused a power outage.

“We had an outage that affected about 400 customers south ofBrookway Boulevard and down Highway 51,” said Jim Hedges, regionalcustomer service manager for Entergy.

“Our office is out of power, too,” added Kenny Goza, accountservice manager.

The outage occurred about 6:30 a.m. when a switch failed in atransformer at the corner of those two streets, he said.

“It was difficult to find, but we finally traced it down to aswitch that had failed,” Hedges said.

Approximately 250 customers had their power restored around 8a.m. when Entergy rerouted the power around the failed switch.Further rerouting had power fully restored around 9:05 a.m.

Entergy crews were working on the failed switch this morning,and Hedges said he expected the power to be rerouted correctlythrough the new switch by noon.