Lake Country Power line crews made great progress to restore service for nearly 950 co-op members overnight. The electric cooperative expects power will be fully restored today as crews continue working on repairs. As of 8:30 a.m. there are 140 co-op members remaining without power (57 members in Itasca County, 29 in St. Louis County, and 17 members in Cass County). 

“We have around 12 poles left to change in the Cohasset service area and then we should be all up today,” said Wade Gould, LCP area supervisor.

At the height of the storm, 8,700 Lake Country Power members lost service Memorial Day evening. Lake Country Power kept crews working safely around the clock.

The severe holiday storm busted at least 30 poles, blew trees onto power lines, downed power lines and damaged infrastructure. A tornado touchdown was confirmed in Deer River, Minn. Straight-line winds were reported Monday evening on the western and northwestern edges of the cooperative’s service area. Winds and rain remained steady with sustained speeds up to 30 mph on Tuesday, May 31. 

The co-op reminds everyone to always stay away from downed power lines because it’s impossible to know if the line is energized. Lake Country Power thanks its members for their willingness to help line crews, but urges them to leave the work for lineworkers to make all repairs during each storm, including tree removal.

“We still have all of June, July and August ahead of us with July being the traditional stormiest month,” said Greg Schulzetenberg, manager of community relations and marketing. “There will likely be more storms this summer, but we are ready, trained and equipped to respond immediately with the most diligent and committed crews in the industry. They are a hard-working bunch of professionals.”

Members may call the cooperative at 1-800-421-9959 to report an outage, or visit the Outage Center online at www.lakecountrypower.coop or http://outage.lcp.coop for an outage status.