Power out for an hour in Bigfork area

Roughly 4,500 residents of southeast Flathead County lost power for an hour Tuesday when Flathead Electric Cooperative suffered a pair of simultaneous problems.

According to Flathead Electric Public Relations Officer Wendy Ostrom-Price, at about 9 a.m. a pole fire and what is now believed to have been an equipment failure led to a loss of power for the whole of Bigfork as well as for many people along the Swan.

“At first we thought the whole thing was caused by the pole fire, but now we think that was just part of it and some sort of equipment fault was responsible for the rest,” Ostrom-Price said. “We’ll have simultaneous outages sometimes, but the fact that they were both in Bigfork had us confused for a little bit.”

She said power was restored within about an hour.