HOUSTON -- A massive explosion and fire broke out at a southwest Houston power substation on Thursday, knocking out electricity to thousands of homes and businesses, KPRC Local 2 reported.

Houston firefighters responded to the blaze at the power plant along the Southwest Freeway near Wake Forest Drive at about 12:50 p.m.

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Team Coverage: Thousands Deal With Outage From Fire

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Thick black smoke covered nearby buildings and the freeway, and it could be seen for miles.

CenterPoint Energy officials said 17,000 customers were initially without power, including Greenway Plaza. By 4 p.m., 3,000 remained without electricity. Authorities said Greenway Plaza would be the last area to have power restored because underground lines are involved.

Officials said the explosion occurred when the transformer was re-energized after it was repaired following an outage.

"They had an explosion, which released a large amount of the oil coolant that's used inside the transformers. It was the oil that was burning. There was no danger for humans or for property," said district chief Bob Schlieter.

"It was fire coming from all in between those things, and the smoke was so heavy, I didn't know what it was. It was thick, thick, thick, thick, thick -- just thick smoke," witness Mary Jane Ruffin said. "It was just shooting clean up to the sky."

"All of a sudden I heard some loud boom. I felt everything shaking. I looked over here and saw a huge plume of smoke going up. It was a lot of smoke, so it kind of freaked me out," witness Morgan Josephf said.

Guadalajara Mexican Grille was closest to the power substation. The building evacuated immediately.

"People (were) just screaming in the restaurant and running, like kind of panicking. At the beginning, we didn't think it was too bad until somebody said, 'The energy plant is on fire, so please leave and evacuate,'" employee Ruben Garza said.

The restaurant was without power for four hours. It will reopen for dinner on Thursday.

The substation was shut down while firefighters sprayed foam on the blaze to keep it from spreading. Officials said the fire was brought under control by 1:30 p.m.

One school, Lamar High School, located at 3325 Westheimer Road, was included in the outage. Students were sent home at 2:40 p.m. Power was restored late Thursday afternoon.

Rice School and West University Elementary School reported problems with their phone and computer systems. However, they did have power, officials said.

The North Harris College main campus closed at 2 p.m. because of the outage.

Numerous traffic lights were knocked out in the area, causing traffic to back up at intersections.

METRO officials said the following bus routes were delayed because of traffic in the area: 73, 163, 18, 2, 65, 26, 27 and 4.

No injuries were reported.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

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