LEWISTON – Segments of the city went dark late Tuesday night after powerlines burned beneath a downtown street.

Central Maine Power Co. crews were working on lines below Canal Street early Wednesday morning trying to restore power to more than a dozen locations.

The problem was reported shortly before 11 p.m. when businesses along Park, Lisbon and Canal streets lost power.

Among them were the Sun Journal on Park Street where editors were scrambling to meet deadlines early Wednesday morning.

City Hall at the corner of Park and Pine streets lost power as did several other buildings in the surrounding area.

“There are numerous buildings without power right now,” said Lewiston police Lt. Don Mailhot. “We were notified that City Hall was down.”

The Police Department was not affected because that building is on a different grid, Mailhot said.

The source of the problem was located beneath Canal Street, according to a CMP spokeswoman. She said crews were able to access the burned-out lines through a manhole.

Repairs were expected to be made before business hours Wednesday morning, the spokeswoman said. What caused the problem was not known.

Sun Journal employees were struggling to get the paper out after power was restored shortly before 2 a.m. CMP advised that electric service was being rerouted to the newspaper for a three-hour period, before being shut off again to repair the burned line.

Mailhot said there were no serious problems otherwise as a result of the outage.