Area residents woke to quiet and dark houses to start the work week after an early morning collision took out a power pole in west Brainerd.
Those driving to work about 6:45 a.m. Monday saw a bright flash in the sky not far from the Westgate Mall when the pole came down, including Brainerd Public Utilities secretary Sharon Jensen, who said the whole sky lit up as she traveled down Riverside Drive. The stoplights at Washington and Northwest Fourth streets, she said, went black.
Scott Magnuson, Brainerd Public Utilities superintendent, said a dump truck with its bucket up hit a cable line, which in turn snapped a pole in half on James Street. The loss of the pole, across from Tanner Motors, left 1,100 customers without power. The bulk of those customers had their power restored in about 40 minutes, Magnuson said. About 200 customers were expected to have power restored by noon Monday. Tanner Motors was expected to be without power the longest as crews worked to remove the shattered pole and put up a replacement.
The power outage affected customers west of the Mississippi River, those north of Washington Street and over to Cypress Drive along with customers in the Riverside Drive and Beaver Dam Road areas, including the Northtown neighborhood.
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As of Monday afternoon, all but 10 of the roughly 400 Crow Wing Power customers who lost power Sunday had it restored, according to the company’s outage map.
Minnesota Power wrote on its Facebook page Monday crews were working to restore power to 80 customers in the Hackensack area, with power expected to be back on by 4:45 p.m.
