Blizzard conditions knocked out power last night for roughly 573 Federated Rural Electric members in Jackson County.
According to officials from Federated, the outage lasted from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. The co-op members affected were served by the Wilder substation.
Federated officials said ITC’s transmission line north of Lakefield brings power to the Wilder substation. Federated line crews worked to restore power isolating the problem with the transmission line.
According to the Federated Rural Electric report, it took ITC crews about an hour to close the breaker back as a relay had locked out at ITC’s substation, which needed to be replaced first. The original cause, according to staff, was that an ITC transmission line pole had a wire come loose and started the pole on fire.
“Federated thanks members for their patience,” Federated’s Operations Manager George Madden said. “This outage took a bit longer to restore as our crews had to work with ITC crews. No failure of Federated equipment occurred with this outage.”
Federated is a Touchstone Energy cooperative serving more than 5,300 members in Jackson and Martin Counties
Newspapers arrive/ storm updates
Below is a quick update on blizzard-related information received by Citizen Online today — most notably, it appears the Cottonwood County Citizen and Mt. Lake-Butterfield Observer/Advocate will be on news stands this afternoon.
* The blizzard has caused a delay in receiving both the Cottonwood County Citizen and Mt. Lake-Butterfield Observer/Advocate from the printing press. However, those editions have now arrived. Store copies of both the Citizen and Observer-Advocate should be on news stands shortly after noon today. There could also be a delay in mail delivery, as well.
* Cottonwood County and Des Moines Valley Health and Human Services announced that offices would remain closed today due to the blizzard conditions.
* The Windom Post Office will not have mail delivery today, as trucks carrying mail were not able to arrive at the office overnight.
* The Windom Library will be closed today.
* Toro announced that its first shift was cancelled.
