Line crews work through the night to restore power

Arrowhead Electric and Grand Marais Public Utilities line crews have been working through the night to restore power after heavy snow and downed trees damaged power lines from one end of the county to the other.

The first calls reporting outages came in around 7 p.m. with hundreds of people without power. As of 5:45 this morning, Arrowhead Electric Operations Manager John Twiest says power has been restored to all but about 40 customers.

Twiest says there were two line crews are in the field, locating and making repairs, one on the east end of the county and the other on the west end. The first restorations occurred around 11:30 p.m., when lineworkers in the Grand Portage area had restored power to the Upper Road/Hat Point area of Grand Portage.

Twiest says the crew working on the east end of the county will be stopping for a few hours to get some food and rest. They will resume a bit later today.

The crew on the west end will continue as they can to restore power to the areas listed below.

However, Twiest cautioned that with the high winds predicted, there could be more outages, which has been the case. The list of outage locations grew through the night and there is still a possibility of more as the winds continue.

If you have power at your residence at this time, it would be wise to find flashlights and store some water.

Twiest reports that power has been restored to the following areas as of 5:45 a.m., December 28:  

Bloomquist Mountain Rd
Kelly’s Hill Rd
Kelly’s Ridge Rd
Grand Portage area 
Cramer Road.
Cliff Cove Rd
Sugar Beach Dr
North Rd
Camp 20
Flute Reed
Tom Lake
Arrowhead Trail
All of County Rd 7
Quist Road
Fall River Road
East Highway 61 (the 4300, 7100, 7200 areas)
Upper Road, Grand Portage
 
Twiest said known addresses or areas with outages are:

Lutsen: Mink Ranch Road, Turnagain Trl, Boulder Point Rd, Boreal Ln, Happy Acres, 
Wildwood Acres in Tofte
Sno Shoe Trail
Horseshoe Bay Rd
Mt Maud, Grand Portage