Storm causes outage for 600 customers

    Drumheller and area residents were woken up early Monday morning by bright flashes of lightning followed by bombastic thunder.     Because of the storm, a number of residents in the area also woke up in the dark.
    Allan Gano, district manager of ATCO Electric, said they were dealing with a number of issues resulting from the lightning storm.
    “Drumheller service personnel began responding at 5:30 a.m. to outages and they were hard at work,” said Gano.
    He explains that in the storm a structure was hit that required service crews to take a larger outage to facilitate repairs in the emergency situation. From 7:50 to 9:15 a.m. about 600 customers in the eastern Drumheller area were without service. All the repairs were completed safely.
    “There were a number of strikes, but the one that caused the most damage was the one to the gang switch (in eastern Drumheller),” said Gano.
    He said lightning has caused a number of issues for ATCO Electric.
    “In general, this weekend across the province has been busy for us. The Coronation area was busy as well,” said Gano.
    Thunderstorm watch and warnings continued throughout most of Monday and into the evening.