Thursday, October 23, 2003
Brief power failures hit New
Richmond
New Richmond News
Two brief power failures Thursday morning are the apparent result of a transmission problem outside the city of New Richmond, administrator Dennis Horner said Friday. The outages -- one at about 2:30 a.m. and the other at about 10 a.m. -- blacked out power in the city and the town of Star Prairie, among other locations. The outages also affected the city of Amery, Horner said.
New Richmond Municipal Utility electric superintendent Tom Rickard said Monday that the two outages were apparently unrelated.
A spokesman for Xcel Energy told Rickard that one of the outages was caused by a tree falling on a power line, and that the second was traced to Xcel's Blackbrook hydro dam on the Apple River, about halfway between Amery and New Richmond. (Five miles north of Deer Park.)
“There wasn’t much we could do about it, and there certainly was no way to anticipate either one of (the power failures), said Rickard. Both outages brought many phone calls from electrical customers in the city. “Oh, man, there were a zillion calls,” said Rickard. The second outage -- Thursday morning -- produced the most consternation among customers, he added.
“The industrial and commercial users were hit worst,” he said. “We heard from lots of manufacturing facilities after that second one. For example, they had situations where there were drill presses going, and then after the power went back on, the machines re-started and the drill bits broke off. “There were lots of nightmares for the customers, but unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could do about it,” he added.
Customers of St. Croix Electric, which supplies power to many customers south and east of New Richmond, were not affected, and the Hammond-based company said Thursday that it received no calls about power failures. A spokesman for Xcel Energy said Friday that customers who notice their power going off should document the date and time, then call (800) 895-1999 to report the power failure.
