Just before the time we turned over our clocks for daylight savings, a turn of events prompted an unexpected power outage on Friday, Nov. 5 for students living off-campus on the East side of Winona, including the East Lake student apartment complex.

Among those impacted by the sudden power outage on Friday evening included neighboring residents of the multifamily business district.

A temporary malfunction with electric power equipment caused the electricity interruption for the people living between the 600 block of Franklin Street and the 300 block of East Sarnia Street.

Janis Rinehart, a Winona State communications major, explained her experience of the brief outage sometime around 11 p.m.

“I was in complete darkness as I was exiting East Lake Apartment Building C. Every light inside and outside of the residence common area went down,” Rinehart said.

Rinehart also said before she could react, all the lights in and around East Lake came back on.

Luckily, no one affected by the outage in East Lake was hurt or experienced severe effects. No other first responding personnel were deployed. Mark Williams of the Winona State Facilities Department said that any and all outages that occur off campus are not something the Winona State Facilities department deals with.

In a phone interview following the power outage, Catharine Johnson, an Xcel Energy customer service representative, said the exact causes of the incident for the city of Winona were still under investigation and Xcel Energy technicians were still working on the problem.