Thousands of people in darkness after lightning strikes the FPL substation, causing a colossal fire

A lightning strike hit a Florida Power & Light substation, causing a huge fire and extinguishing electricity for thousands of residents Tuesday night in Broward County.

Police confirmed that the strike hit the sub-station at 426 NW 6th Avenue around 8 pm Witnesses said they heard explosions and social media users posted videos and images of flames and black smoke rising to the sky.

According to a FPL unavailability map, nearly 22,000 people were without electricity in Broward County. Spokeswoman Nina Frick said in a statement that FPL was working with the fire emergency service to restore power.

"We are aware of a service outage and a substation fire in Fort Lauderdale and we apologize for the inconvenience to our customers," the statement said. "We are investigating the cause of the incident.Approximately 22,000 customers are affected.Our teams are on site and are working to restore power as quickly and safely as possible.We will continue to communicate with you regularly about the estimated recovery of food and the cause of the "interruption"

The outage has affected thousands of residents, including visitors during the spring break. A video showed the restaurant's guests sitting in total darkness on Las Olas Boulevard, and the opening show of the musical "Dear Evan Hansen" at the Broward Center was canceled due to the blackout . Police in Fort Lauderdale advised people to stay off the road, as work crews were working to restore the voltage supply to many city traffic lights.

The police also stressed in a tweet that the agents would be "crazy" and "intercept those who plan to take advantage of our residents during this time".

No injuries were reported.

This is a story in development. Come back with NBC 6 for updates.