Ohio Edison workers stand near the site of an underground fire in downtown Youngstown today, Feb. 20, 2020. (Photo by Ed Runyan/The Vindicator)

YOUNGSTOWN – All Ohio Edison customers affected by a downtown power outage this morning were back in service by about 1 p.m. today, the company says.

The outage was caused by a fire in an underground vault where Ohio Edison employees were working at Phelps and West Federal Streets downtown, the Youngstown Fire Department said.

Firefighters worked with Ohio Edison to turn off power to the area while they extinguished the flames involving several bundles of power lines, said Batallion Chief Silverio Caggiano.

They responded at 9:45 a.m. and had the fire out and under control within about a half hour, he said.

Ohio Edison said the outage affected 18 customers. The fire was contained to the vault. The damaged line fed into a substation serving 366 customers, but Ohio Edison has equipment in place to isolate outages like this and reduce the overall customers impacted, an Ohio Edison spokesperson said.