Explosion knocks out power to entire town of St. Paul; electricity restored

St. Paul, Neb. (KSNB) - An explosion at a substation near St. Paul caused a power outage that impacted the entire town early Thursday morning.

According to The Howard Greeley Rural Public Power District, a breaker at the substation near Highway 281 and 13th Avenue exploded.

The call was sent to the Howard County dispatch at 5:36 a.m.

Power was restored to the entire town by 7:30 a.m.

“Everybody is back up and on,” said Dirk Dietz, General Manager of Howard Greeley Rural Public Power District. “It’s a good thing it happened this week, versus last week in the cold because the loads are so much higher with the cold weather it would be a little tighter trying to supply power to everybody.”

St. Paul Volunteer Fire Department and EMS responded to the incident. Mutual aid was requested, but canceled.

St. Paul Fire Chief Mike Becker said the flames extinguished themselves and that he does not expect foul play.

“This is a random act that happened, it’s just a piece of equipment failure that’s been in the substation for quite a while,” said Dietz. “I think one of our lineman estimated that it was about ’82 or ’83 when it was installed.”

The exact cause of the fire is unknown.

“We don’t have cost estimates,” said Dietz. “We’ve been working with other power districts around us and we’ve reached out to NPPD, they have the same piece of equipment so they are going to pull that into their shop, they’re going to test it, and hopefully tomorrow afternoon we’ll be able to go pick that up and get it installed tomorrow night before the weekend hits.”

St. Paul Public Schools canceled class Thursday due to their buildings not having power at the time of the incident.

The Howard County Medical Center is only running emergency services until further notice.

“We don’t want to be a burden on the grid as they reestablish services,” said CEO Arlan Johnson.

He said power was fully restored to the center at 8 a.m.

The Howard Greeley Rural Public Power District is investigating the incident.

This is a developing story.

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