Truck puts out power to thousands

Tim Leeds Havre Daily News [email protected]

A crash led to thousands of people from Havre to Chinook losing power Wednesday afternoon. “It was the result of a truck that hi t a power pole that carried a transmission and some distribution lines,” Claudia Rapkoch, spokeswoman for NorthWestern Energy said this morning. According to a record from the Hill County Sheriff's Office, the cal l was reported to the Havre Pol ice Department at 4:21 p.m. Wednesday. The crash occurred on the 1600 block of U.S. Highway 2 East. Informat ion f rom the pol ice department about the crash was not avai lable by deadl ine thi s morning. Rapkoch said the pole being knocked out cut power to people in the eastern part of Havre and to customers as far away as Chinook. Jerry Vandersloot, principal at Havre High School, said the power was out there for about an hour. While some students and teachers were in the bui lding, the onl y major disruption was for the rehearsal of the school play, “The Lark, ” set for product ion next week. No other activities were occurring at the time of the outage, he said. “Play pract ice was the onl y thing going on,” Vandersloot said. Rapkoch said power was out from the time of the crash, about 4:30 p.m., until about 5:30 p.m. for most of the customers. People and businesses closer to the locat ion of the crash, near Havre Ready-Mix on U.S. Highway 2 East, had longer to wait. Rapkoch said the last customers had their power restored by about 9 p.m. The outage affected some 2,000 people in the eastern part of Havre and people in Chinook and Lohman, she said.