Freezing weather creates a few local incidents, outages

Apart from the rigors of dealing with well-below-zero weather (starting vehicles, heating homes and keeping warm, for example), there were a few cold-related incidents around the Flathead Valley:

v A concerned Columbia Falls Police Department officer found a golden retriever wandering around the Terrace Court area and brought him back to the station to warm up and stay the night Wednesday. The following day, Flathead County Animal Control Officer Paul Charbonneau contacted the dog’s owner, who came to pick up the pet.

v The Whitefish Police Department was contacted by two men on Wednesday regarding their court-ordered breath-alcohol tests. A Flathead Avenue man said he would make it but would be late because it was too cold to walk to the police station but he was trying to call people to find someone to give him a ride. An Edgewood Place man said he was worried he would get frostbite if he walked to the station.

v Flathead Electric Cooperative members cranking up their heat and increasing their power usage en masse led to a pair of small outages Thursday affecting 41 members in Libby and four in Kalispell. Co-op spokeswoman Wendy Ostrom-Price said the usage spikes cause overloads in the system that prompted the outages.