News Releases

Crews will begin arriving this afternoon   

Kansas City, MO - August 1, 2024 – Evergy has called in crews from neighboring utilities to help restore power after Wednesday night’s storms. About 350 additional linemen from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Illinois and Iowa will begin arriving this afternoon. They will join the 1,100 Evergy personnel currently working to get power back on.  

As of 1:30 p.m., Evergy has restored 80% of the customers who lost power. Of the 117,000 total customers who lost power, there are currently ab out 16,000 still without. 

Wednesday night’s storms included reported wind speeds as high as 80 mph that rolled through Kansas and into Missouri causing widespread outages. The Salina, Topeka, Lawrence, and Kansas City metro areas had significant damage.  

The storm impact was most severe in the Topeka and Salina area, where the storm knocked down more than 50 power poles, along with other widespread, extensive damage. In Salina, the strong winds damaged multiple transmission lines that help deliver power across longer distances. This caused a large part of the area to lose power. Evergy expects to complete repairs to those lines tonight.  

Most Evergy customers in the Salina and Topeka areas will have power restored today and Friday, but some outages are expected to stretch into Saturday afternoon.  

Lawrence and the Kansas City metro area also experienced widespread outages with hundreds of repairs needed. While power will be on for most customers sooner, we expect that some customers will be out until Friday evening.  

Customers should continue to prioritize safety.  

• Stay at least 30 feet away from any downed line. 
• Assume that it is still energized.  
• Report downed lines right away online at http://www.evergy.com/powerlinesafety. 
• Call 911 in an emergency.  

Evergy prioritizes outages to first restore service to public safety facilities and then based on restoring power to the most customers, which means repairing main lines and then focusing work based on the number of customers affected by individual outages. While line crews are restoring power, other teams are canvassing storm struck areas to assess damage, which makes power restoration more efficient. These teams help ensure vegetation and line crews arrive equipped with what’s needed for local repairs. 

People can report an outage and follow outage updates by downloading the Evergy mobile app: https://www.evergy.com/about-evergy/mobile-app or visit the outage map online: https://outagemap.evergy.com/.  

Customers can also call the contact center.   

Kansas Central: 800-544-4857  

Kansas Metro, Missouri Metro, and Missouri West: 888-544-4852.