The power went out for more than an hour in and around downtown Petersburg the morning of December 23.
Karl Hagerman is utility director of Petersburg Municipal Power and Light. He said some linemen were already up when the power went out at around 5:30 a.m.
“A couple of them were actually out and about and and saw like a large flash that lit up the sky over town,” he said. “And then the power went out, and so they knew something was going on. We know there was a fault somewhere.”
He said that it’s still unclear what caused the outage.
“We normally will attribute it to a branch coming out of a tree and falling on the lines – it makes a contact and the fault occurs, and then it falls away,” he said. “Or possibly it could have been a bird strike.”
Power and Light employees drove along roads in the affected area looking for branches or other things hung up on the lines. They didn’t see anything, so they started the process of bringing the power back on. Hagerman said it was restored by 6:45 a.m.
