UPDATE: Power has been restored to the entire building as of 4:15 p.m. on Thursday.

EARLIER UPDATE: An executive with the ownership company of Sala Flats, Rock Island, says about 60 percent of the building has electricity and heat again after residents lost both Monday evening. Technicians are waiting for more parts to finish the job completely.

“They have been relentless in their efforts to make sure that we come to a conclusion here,” Economic Growth Corporation Senior Vice President Beth Payne told Our Quad Cities News.

“All I’m aware of is that the incident was caused by the failure of a bushing disc at the house meter,” Payne added. “This is not something that is ever anticipated. It is never something that can be foreseen,” said Payne. “This is the first time this has ever happened to us within our history.”

Payne also said emergency housing is still available for the tenants at a local hotel until the situation is resolved.

“All tenants had to do was go to the check-in and state they were from our property and they were given a hotel room,” said Payne. “The property owner is paying for these accommodations.” 

And the property owners are reimbursing tenants for food during the outage.

“We have been in communication with any other emergency services, such as the American Red Cross, to see if there is anything else that we can provide in terms of emergency services for our tenants,” Payne added.

The property owners are trying to take steps to keep this from happening again.

“We will definitely be making sure that our other properties are communicated with Tri-City Electric to really get the best practices in place to make sure that this can be avoided,” Payne said.

The building underwent more than $4.5 million dollars in renovations last June. Those improvements included new windows and plumbing upgrades. Property managers say the renovations have no connection to the power outage.