Killdeer, Dunn Center lose power

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A power outage left 618 people in Killdeer and Dunn Center without power for about 40 minutes Wednesday morning.

“The phones didn’t ring, the computers didn’t work and it was pitch dark,” said Terri Roshau of Sax Motor Co. in Killdeer. “It disrupted business for about a half-hour, I mean people still could have walked in but we really couldn’t help them without our system up and running.”

Killdeer Medical Clinic office assistant Maria Hiltunen said the clinic kept going despite the outage.

“We have some back-up lights and the power came back on pretty quickly, thank God,” Hiltunen said.

MDU Resources Senior Public Relations Representative Mark Hanson said the outage was caused by an open breaker in a Western Area Power Administration substation, which feeds the Killdeer and Dunn Center areas.

“I don’t know why the breaker opened,” Hanson said.

He added as soon as MDU was notified about the outage, WAPA was contacted.

“They took care of it from there,” Hanson said.

As of 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, WAPA Corporate Communications Specialist Randy Wilkerson said he did not have confirmation as to the cause of the outage but added, “MDU probably has a good idea of what happened.”

Tags: dunn center, news, killdeer