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...