(ABC 6 News) – A power outage in downtown Rochester Thursday took down traffic lights and businesses for several hours, forcing some to close up shop for the night, was caused by a piece of failed piece of equipment that’s been in service for decades.

According to Rochester Public Utilities, the problem started at the intersection of First Avenue SW and Sixth Street SW when they were notified by internal systems of the failure.

Business owners in the area first noticed a problem earlier in the afternoon.

“We opened our lunch like regular until around 1:00 P.M. and then I got a call from my staff saying that the whole block was out of electricity,” said Sammi Loo, owner of Mezza 9 Cafe and Bebap Korean Eats on First Ave.

RPU also reported a small outage around that time, but the power was only out for about 30 minutes.

Then, barely an hour or two later, it hit again.

“Around maybe 3:30 – 3:45, (the power) went out again,” said Pasquale Presa, owner of Pasquale’s Neighborhood Pizzeria. “We lost everything, total power, no telephones.”

The outage stretched beyond just the local businesses, too.

The entirety of downtown, excluding Mayo Clinic’s facilities, lost power.

Even the street lights were out.

It took RPU several hours to troubleshoot and redirect power to start serving the downtown are again. By that time, many businesses had closed for the night, missing out on potential sales.

“We had to close everything and then we had to send our employees back home,” said Loo.

Or, find other workarounds.

“We deployed three people to go to our local Menards, Home Depot and Lowes and clean their shelf out with lights, so as you can see we have lights all around now,” said Presa, gesturing to multiple camping lanterns scattered throughout the restaurant.

The whole issue stemmed from one piece of equipment.

“We call these a submersible electrical switch,” said Neil Stiller, RPU’s manager of electric maintenance and construction. “It’s durable so that water, soil, whatever is not affecting the piece of equipment normally.”

These switches, stored underground, are designed to help control the flow of electricity, even during flooding.

They’re also an aging piece of equipment.

“It is a device from the mid-1980’s,” said Stiller. “So there’s a certain amount of age to it. Occasionally, they do have a problem that we have to address, and that’s what happened (here).”

Though RPU does believe the age of the system played a factor, Still also said they’re conducting further investigation to figure out the root cause.

He said residents can expect work to be done around the intersection in the coming weeks to either reconstruct or replace the faulty equipment.