November begins with East End power outage
A temporary malfunction with electrical 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 which led to an unexpected power outage on Friday, Nov. 5. This affected the East end of Winona including East Lake Apartments for a brief time.
November 17, 2021
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.
Johnson also explained that causes of a local area power outage can be the result of fallen trees, certain types of vegetation, severe weather and so on. She also stressed the importance of outage safety and said when there is a power outage in your area, things people can do include searching for the most current information about what is going on. She suggested listening to local radio stations hooked into the local news network in the area affected for updates.
To report problems with electric power outages happening in your town or city, call 1-800-895-1999. Customers can also follow, report and receive status updates and keep track of outage and safety reports on an interactive map on the Xcel Energy website at www.xcelenergy. com/storm_center.
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