Equipment failure at the main substation in Whitefish caused a power outage last Friday that darkened downtown for over two hours, stymieing traffic and creating a stir as the busy holiday weekend commenced.
Officers from the Montana Highway Patrol and Whitefish Police Department directed traffic through most of the downtown streets while crews with Flathead Electric Co-Op scrambled to repair a malfunction at the substation on Kalispell Street. The outage occurred just before 6 p.m. and was fixed by 8:10 p.m., according to Flathead Electric officials.
“They were able to make the needed repairs. It shouldn’t have happened. It’s a piece of equipment that’s not passed its guaranteed level,” said Wendy Ostrom-Price, public relations officer with Flathead Electric.
An estimated 2,400 residents and businesses in the greater downtown area lost power to varying degrees, she said.
The outage was the second noticeable disruption in downtown Whitefish in as many months. On Jan. 3, a power outage left area businesses in the dark, the result of a blown transformer at the same Whitefish substation, which provides power to the city.
Ostrom-Price said at the peak of the outage more than 6,300 customers were left in the dark. Power was restored across Whitefish by the early morning hours of Jan. 4. She said it’s unclear what caused the transformer to break but that it was replaced the following day.
Even though both outages occurred during a busy holiday weekend, Ostrom-Price said the two malfunctions were not related to over-use.
“Unfortunately, that’s life and it happens sometimes, especially with very complex electrical systems,” she said.