Marion – Many in the area woke up to an unwelcome surprise this morning as an Ameren outage left more than 3,000 residents without power. Reports show that outages in Benton and Thompsonville started at just before 5:00am with Johnston City following at just before 6:00am. After getting Those three back up, an outage was reported in Crainville at around 8:30. A report from Ameren stated that some malfunctioning equipment in one of their substations this morning was the cause of the outage.