Power outage hits north Red Deer after object strikes line Thursday

A power outage that took place in north Red Deer on Thursday night has been restored.

The City of Red Deer says at 4:31 p.m., the neighbourhoods of Riverside Meadows, Highland Green, and parts of downtown Red Deer were impacted until power was restored hours later.

Todd Schick with the City of Red Deer said it was a significant outage, which was caused by the wind storm.

“What we believe it to be was an object that struck a power line in Riverside Meadows because, upon investigation, when we were up there, there were no burn marks, which did tell me that something big enough landed on the line, causing the wires to touch each other,” Schick said. “Something flew, hit the line, and what it did was split the wire, and then the wire came to the ground. Our lines are extremely durable, so whatever hit it, hit it with a lot of force.”

Schick explained that power was restored by 6:15 p.m., but many in the Riverside Meadows area were without power until 8 p.m.

The City of Red Deer reported that approximately 2,000 customers were impacted by the outage.

Schick added that shortly after 7 a.m. today, they responded to a report of another line that had come down in the downtown area, but it turned out to be a Telus communications line. Schick said it came down because something blew off a building and struck the line, and brought it to the ground.