Thousands remain without power in southeast North Dakota - INFORUM

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Thousands remain without power in southeast North Dakota

Ongoing weather issues caused an initial total of about 4,200 outages, and about 3,600 people were without power from Cass County Electric Cooperative early Wednesday

FARGO — The ice storm that struck the region on Christmas Day affected the entire service area for Cass County Electric Cooperative, leaving an estimated 500 broken electric poles in its wake.

Ongoing weather issues continued into Tuesday, Dec. 26, initially causing about 4,200 outages to happen simultaneously, the company reported. By Wednesday morning, the number of customers without power was hovering around 3,600, said Jocelyn Hovland, Cass County Electric Cooperative communications manager. The company's outage map showed over 4,800 customers without power Wednesday evening.

Because of the amount of damage from ice and heavy winds, the cooperative requested aid from other North Dakota power companies, including Roughrider Electric Cooperative Inc., Burke-Divide Electric Cooperative and Mckenzie Electric Cooperative, Hovland said. Other agencies that began helping Wednesday afternoon include Wild Rice Electric Cooperative, Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative, Beltrami Electric Cooperative and Clearwater-Polk Electric Cooperative Inc.

Minnkota Power Cooperative, a power supplier, is still working on transmission and substation issues on top of the damage, Hovland said.

Cass and Barnes counties were hit hardest by the inclement weather, with about 1,000 customers losing power in Cass County, and about 1,400 in Barnes County, according to Cass County Electric Cooperative’s outage viewer. Ransom County had 869 customers without power, while Richland, Sargent and LaMoure counties had far fewer outages, ranging between a few dozen to about 150 customers without power Wednesday morning.

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"Affected members should expect to be out of power through the weekend or longer," Cass County Electric said in a Facebook post.

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“We are still assessing the damage; it could be more. We have 6,000 miles of line, and it’s going to take a while to get all that patrolled, let alone repaired,” Hovland said.

Most of the damage came from ice buildup causing trees and branches to fall and from lines that became too heavy and sagged, which can take down poles, she said.

Hovland didn’t remember a time when a winter storm affected the cooperative’s customers so heavily, and there is no estimate of when power might be fully restored.

“It looks like about half our rural accounts have been affected by this,” Hovland said, adding the majority of the cooperative’s customer base is in the Fargo-Moorhead area, and lines in town are buried underground.

Otter Tail Power Company had about 3,000 affected customers from the icy storm, Stephanie Hoff, director of communications, said Tuesday.

Early Wednesday, Otter Tail Power crews were in the field making repairs to dozens of broken poles and cross arms, still busy restoring lines, the company reported on its Facebook page. Otter Tail Power's outage map showed 8,500 customers without power in the Jamestown area and over 13,000 total customers without power across north-central and southeast North Dakota on Wednesday evening.

Affected areas included about 13 towns near Jamestown and five towns in the Wahpeton area, the company reported.

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“We don’t have an estimated time for repairs in these areas,” Otter Tail Power wrote.

Xcel Energy spokesperson Theo Keith reported the storm knocked out power to about 4,000 of its customers. Xcel Energy had power restored to all customers by noon Tuesday in the Fargo area, Keith told The Forum.

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