Power outage impacts thousands across central Minnesota

A widespread power outage in the evening of Tuesday, May 7 left over 2,700 homes and businesses in the dark for several hours stretching from Pierz to nearby communities like Rice, Harding and Royalton. The outage impacted a large swath of Morrison County.

At the Pierz City Council meeting on Monday, May 13, Public Works Director Eric Gaffke said he reached out to officials with Minnesota Power, which provides electricity to the region. They said the outage originated from a maintenance operation at one of its regional substations located halfway across Morrison County from Pierz. Crews there were performing upgrades when a fuse or breaker failed, disrupting power flows along key transmission lines serving the area.

While power has now been restored across the entire affected area, questions remain about what exactly caused the failure that triggered the outage.

After the sun went down with no electricity for light or entertainment, many were left feeling powerless in the dark. But area crews worked diligently through the night to solve the problem and return power to all customers as quickly as possible.