The storm that swept the state Friday night knocked out power for around 5 thousand people in the Bismarck/Mandan area. Montana Dakota Utilities, which supplies power to the area, started getting calls for outages around 5 in the evening.
Mark Snider is the senior public relations representative for MDU. He says the damages were extensive.
"Everything from trees on power lines, to poles that were actually damaged - snapped by the force of the storm. Really anything that you can imagine could happen to an overheard wire, we encounter all of those different challenges throughout the storm."
Snider says once it was safe, they got to work
"We mobilized all available resources. We brought in crews from Montana and South Dakota to help out. They went to the areas that had the most damage and immediately worked to address those. A majority of customers were back on by Saturday night."
A few people whose home electrical equipment was damaged are still without power. Snider says they’ll be back up and running soon, but MDU also is facing problems in the Jamestown area. There, a number of gas lines were ruptured when trees were torn from the ground. Snider says they hope to have that issues solved within the week.