Power outage hits businesses, homes in Havre and west

It was the afternoon the lights went out in Havre Wednesday, when all business temporarily ceased and people in much of western Havre were without power as much as two hours.

NorthWestern Energy said it first received word of the outage shortly before 1 p.m., leaving roughly 540 customers without power including Walmart, Kmart and stores in the Holiday Village Mall. Power was restored gradually, and all power was back by 3 p.m.

At first, the outage was thought to be caused by a bird touching a wire on a power line at the junction of U.S. highways 2 and 87. Upon inspection however, Butch Larcombe, a spokesperson for NorthWestern Energy said it was caused by a faulty arrestor, that caused an entire circuit to lose power. There were no lightning storms in Havre at that time, so lightning was dismissed as a cause of the failed arrestor.

Larcombee said workers will either repair or replaced the arrestor.

During the affected hours, customers were left milling about in the darkness of the Holiday Village Mall, speculating about the causes.

One of those venues likely to be most affected was Yummy Foods, an ice cream and food vendor in the mall. Yummy Food team members Kayla Berg and Aaron Hofland said the power went out as they were about to prepare a smoothie for a customer.

"Right when we took the order, we couldn't make it anymore, because obviously our blenders we're out," said Berg.

Employees at Yummy Foods and Walmart said that as long as the cases in which the food is stored were kept shut and below room temperature, and the outage lasted only lasted a few hours, the merchandise could still be sold.