More than 6,000 homes in Brown County went dark just after 11 p.m., and the outage stretches as far north as southern Morgan County.

Power restoration crews from Duke Energy and South Central REMC were dispatched to the county within the past hour to fix the outages, affecting 3,329 REMC customers and 2,797 Duke customers in Brown County as of 11:30 p.m.

The reason for the outage, on REMC's website, is listed as "power supplier," but for about 400 customers in downtown Nashville, the reason was attributed to "equipment fail." That appears to have been the first local outage, at about 10 p.m.

Brown County customers are the most widely affected. A handful of customers in Bartholomew, about 700 in Monroe County and about 650 in Morgan County also are without power.

Duke Energy's website estimates power restoration within three hours or less.

THURSDAY 12:57 p.m. UPDATE: Duke Energy spokesman Lew Middleton says a utility pole between Bean Blossom and Samaria in Johnson County caught fire last night, and a cross piece fell into a high-voltage transmission line, causing the outage. Power was restored at 12:17 a.m., Duke's records show, with the outage lasting only 70 minutes.

He said he wasn't exactly sure how the fire affected REMC customers, who also lost power at about the same time. REMC has not yet returned a call seeking comment.