UPDATE: High winds down trees and power lines throughout county

UPDATE, approximately 3 p.m. on Oct. 6 - Arrowhead crews restored power to members as of 9:45 PM Friday, October, 5, 2018.

Arrowhead crews began working on Saturday, October, 6, 2018 to continue restoration for True North broadband subscribers. Arrowhead crews and operations staff worked through a troubleshooting process and found a single point of failure that affected the area from Lindskog Road East to Kimball Creek.

Arrowhead crews will continue line clearing and making repairs to the fiber system and will be responding to outage calls as they make progress.

Outage dispatches and regularly scheduled appointments will continue to make repairs to the fiber system. True North appreciates your patience if you have a sustained outage from the storm damage.

UPDATE, approximately 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 4 -Crews have restored power from the Colvill Substation on County Rd 14 to Hovland along the shore of Lake Superior and along Highway 61. The out-lying areas will still be without power since efforts are focused on the main line to the border.

Assistance from Lake States Construction has been called in, and a crew is on their way from Grand Rapids. They will be assigned a guide and get started moving west to restore power.

Updates will be issued as more information becomes available.

UPDATE, approximately 8 a.m. on Oct. 4 - Highway Department crews worked through the night clearing several trees to ensure all Cook County roads/highways are passable. Cleanup of road ditches will continue today and next week. No County roads are closed as of 6 am today.

Power crews from both local companies also worked through the night. Currently, there are about 1,000 Arrowhead members without power covering all five substations, as well as outages in Grand Marais.

Crews are in the Colvill to Grand Portage area working on restoring power to the border. First priorities are the three-phase lines which are the main feeders.

Arrowhead will be working their way back from Grand Portage line by line to ensure power is restored as they go.
There are no estimates on the length of time it will take to restore power to these affected areas. The crews have been out all night and will continue for a number of hours yet. Thus far, it is just trees on the lines, not much damage to the infrastructure, but we have a long way to go to restore power to all customers.

Cook County is currently assessing the extent of the damage county-wide.

The USFS is also working on clearing strategies for downed trees in the Superior National Forest lands.

The cold front and strong winds predicted by the National Weather Service for Wednesday night into Thursday morning have hit as predicted, downing trees and causing power outages throughout the county.

In the city of Grand Marais, the Grand Marais Fire Department was paged just after 11 p.m. to respond to multiple trees on fire on power lines-—near the Cook County Highway Department, on Humphrey Circle, on Sixth Street near the MacArthur House B&B,  at Village North (the former Gofer Cabins) and on Fourth Avenue West. The Colvill and Hovland fire departments were paged to a tree burning on a line near Kelly's Hill in Colvill.

The Grand Marais Fire Department was also paged to the Grand Marais Municipal Campground for a report of a tree on a camper. The fire department responded to find two RVs had been hit by trees. However there were no injuries.

Arrowhead Electric and Grand Marais Public Utilities line crews are working to restore power. At this time there is no estimate when power will be restored.

County Highway Department crews are also out, working to clear downed trees on roads on the Gunflint Trail, Pike Lake Road and others. There are reports of trees down on Highway 61 as well.

The storm, with northwest winds of 15 to 25 mph with gusts of 40 to 50 mph is expected to continue until 4 a.m. Thursday morning, with the strongest winds up until midnight.

Homeowners are encouraged to prepare for power outages.

Motorists are advised to use extreme caution. If you are driving a high profile vehicle, winds could make driving difficult and possibly unsafe. Motorists are also advised to watch for downed trees and limbs on roadways.