Utility blues: Water line breaks, power pole fire leads to outage

Fire and water emergencies affected customer utilities last week in Whitehall.

The two instances had workers from NorthWestern Energy and the Town of Whitehall diligently working several hours to get utilities working for residents, schools and businesses.

Butch Larcombe, a spokesman for NorthWestern Energy, reported a call was received at 6:15 a.m. on Friday morning reporting a power pole on fire. NorthWestern Energy quickly sent out crews having some of the 178 customers affected power back on in thirty minutes.

The rest of the customers had power restored about noon. The cause was reported as equipment failure. Larcombe said it was an insulator failure, causing the wire to heat up, ultimately causing the pole to catch fire and needing to be replaced.

Town Clerk/Treasurer Summer Fellows reported a water break on Whitehall Street in front of the library on Wednesday evening. Fellows said town employees worked on the break ardently for about nine hours.

Fellows said Town Hall employees tried to call everyone, but there were some they were unaware were connected to the line, and around six or seven houses were impacted by the break.