A faulty underground cable was the cause of Tuesday afternoon's power blackout in the Granger and McIntyre subdivisions, an official with Yukon Electrical Co. Ltd. said today.

Customer service manager Craig Steinbach said power to 620 customers in the two neighbourhoods went out at 4:50.

The Yukon Electrical crew restored power to all of the 408 Granger customers while continuing what Steinbach described as the difficult challenge of locating the faulty underground cable.

Power to another 155 McIntyre residents was restored by 8 p.m., with all the remaining customers except Race Track Gas back on at 9 p.m.

The faulty cable was feeding the gas station, which had power restored at 11 p.m. after the crew hooked up a bypass, Steinbach said.

He said a repair crew was scheduled to dig down to the cable today to make repairs.

Underground cables are very tough and when failure occurs, it's usually because of another factor, such as a rock worming its way through the ground that ends up pushing into the cable, Steinbach said.