Power was restored to about 9,000 Tideland Electric Membership Corp. customers in Beaufort, Hyde and Washington counties Tuesday morning after some of them were without power for about five hours.

Dominion Power, which provides power to Tideland, suffered a transmission service interruption, according to Heidi Jernigan Smith, manager of economic development, marketing and corporate communications for Tideland.

About 9,000 customer lost power about 4:30 a.m. today when the transmission service was interrupted. At midmorning, Smith said Dominion Power had not determined a cause for the service interruption.

Initially, power was restored Tideland EMC’s Washington and Five Points substations about 6 a.m. Power was restored to the remaining 6,000 customers about 9:30 a.m.

“This outage affects all Tideland members north of the Pamlico River with the exception of members served by the Plymouth and Manns Harbor substations,” reads an email from Tideland EMC.

Northeast Elementary School in Beaufort County closed at 10:30 a.m. because of the outage. Before being sent home, the students were fed an early lunch. Because no confirmation on when power could be restored, Beaufort County Schools decided to send the students home for safety reasons, said Sarah Hodges, BCS spokeswoman. She said the overcast skies further darkened the school, making it difficult for students, teachers and others to safely get around inside the school.

Although Northside High School lost power because of the outage, its generator kicked in and provided power so it could remain open, Hodges said.

Hyde County schools on the mainland were closed Tuesday because of the outage.