Thursday | April 11, 2019

Cresco, IA | Rushford, MN (4 p.m. April 11, 2019)— As of 4 p.m., MiEnergy Cooperative has about 900 members in Minnesota still without power due to a late winter storm bringing a combination of rain, sleet, ice and snow. The co-op estimates a total of 5,000 members were affected. Several substation outages were cause by transmission line damage. Damage was caused by ice building up on power lines combined with high winds that caused lines to gallop and break poles and sag power line. At last count, the co-op had 100 broken poles. 

Crews were first called out at 7 p.m. Wednesday to restore power. They will continue to work to get as many members back online as possible until 8 p.m. today. Crews will report to work at 5 a.m. tomorrow and expect to restore all electric service, with the exception of some isolated instances.
It will take weeks to permanently fix and cleanup the damage caused by the storm.

photo showing broken electric pole

Media Contact:

Brenda Tesch
Manager of Marketing and Communications
507-864-9218
btesch@MiEnergy.coop