High winds cause power outages
By Neal A. Shipman
Farmer Editor
High winds in excess of 70 miles per hour caused widespread power outages across McKenzie County on Thursday, Jan. 14.
Montana-Dakota Utilities customers in Watford City, Arnegard, Rawson and Alexander bore the biggest brunt of the outage when a transmission jumper line broke near the grain elevators on the south side of Watford City.
“When something like that happens, we have to switch off the line and shut everything down so we can make repairs,” stated Shane Homiston, MDU’s Williston district manager. “It took us longer than we had to get the line replaced.”
For their customers in McKenzie County, including their 2,400 Watford City customers, Homiston says that the power was off for a little over an hour from 9:30 a.m. to 10:40 a.m.
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