A bird flew into an electrical substation in the southwest Iowa town of Griswold this morning and caused nearly 1,200 customers of MidAmerican Energy to lose power. Tina Potthoff, spokeswoman for the utility, says the outage hit parts of three counties shortly after 8 A.M.
As of late this morning, 1,100 customers were still without power. “We’re working to restore their electricity as safely and efficiently as possible. This outage is actually impacting people across three counties — it’s Cass County, Montgomery County and Pottawattamie County. Obviously not the entire county is out, but portions of those counties are impacted,” she says.
Potthoff says they were working to re-route power so the substation can be checked for damage and repaired. While unable to provide a specific timeline for when all customers might have power returned, Potthoff said they are hoping to do so sometime this afternoon. The power is out to customers in Griswold, Lewis and Elliott across parts of Cass, Pottawattamie and Montgomery counties.
(Reporting by Ric Hanson, KJAN, Atlantic)