Power is now back on in Kinston after about half of the city lost electricity this morning.
Eddie Whiteside with Kinston Public Services says around 8:00 a.m. a lightning storm moved through the area and power was knocked out to around 5320 customers around 8:30 a.m.
He says the outage lasted about 45 minutes with six of the city's eight substations going down. A transmission loop which ties all the substations together actually went down and Whiteside says they have to power each one up again individually.
The city is investigating to make sure lightning was actually the cause.
