Power outages wreak havoc

The city of Imperial was left in the dark on Monday, March 25. Several power outages occurred that morning. The outages were caused when the Tri-State Electric 115 kV transmission line south of Imperial tripped. After this happened a few times, Imperial Public Works employee Dan Liebhart switched to the Chase feed located west of town. It is currently unknown why the Tri-State line malfunctioned. However, it is possible it was due to the high winds gusts that were present during the day. Gusts reached upwards of 45 mph on March 25. Many businesses had to close for a few hours in an attempt to spare their electronics but most were back up and running when power was restored around noon. The feed was able to be switched back to the Tri-State transmission line on Tuesday, March 26.