Update: Power Fully Restored In Downtown SF
by KDLT News
January 27, 2013 1:47 PM
After working continually since early Friday morning, Xcel Energy crews completed repairing the heavily damaged underground electricity system in downtown Sioux Falls today and restored power at 10 a.m. to the few customers who remained without service.
Crews from Sioux Falls and the Twin Cities restored power at 12:19 p.m. Saturday to 95 percent of the approximately 200 customers whose power remained out since the outage started at about 4:30 a.m. Friday. Fewer than a dozen customers, all of them businesses, remained without power until this morning.
“We want to thank our customers for their patience while we worked to restore power,” said Laura McCarten, regional vice president for Xcel Energy. “This was an unusual outage in the extent of damage to our system – we removed and replaced thousands of feet of destroyed electrical cable and other pieces of equipment.
“In recognition of the great efforts of the local Red Cross to assist affected customers, we’re pleased to make a $2,500 donation.”
Manhole covers were blown off and a sidewalk buckled when the outage started. The cause of the outage remains under investigation.
More than 500 customers – mostly businesses – initially were affected; crews restored power to about 300 customers in about an hour.
