Farmer hits pole Saturday and takes out Hi-Line power

A farming accident took out power for 60 miles of the Hi-Line Saturday, although a power company representative said it was repaired quickly.

Butch Larcombe of NorthWestern Energy said power went out from about Chester to the Fort Assinniboine area just southwest of Havre about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, with NorthWestern Energy assuming at firts that it was wind-related.

The company later found out that someone hit a pole with equipment while doing field work east of Chester, damaging the pole and causing the power outage, Larcombe said.

The outage hit 938 customers, and lasted until about 7:30 p.m. before NorthWestern employees replaced the pole and got the power back online.

Denise Kovacich of Hill County Electric and Triangle Communications said a couple of the power cooperative’s customers on its Kremlin substation that receives power through NorthWestern Energy reported a power outage. Hill County Electric was unaware at that time exactly how many of its customers were out of power, she said.

Larcombe later said NorthWestern had reports of 241 County Electric customers in the Kremlin and Joplin areas losing power.

Larcombe said no one reported the problem causing power outages in Havre or farther east.

He said that, especially considering that the incident occurred on a weekend evening, the outage was taken care of fairly quickly.

“It could have been much worse,” Larcombe said.