North Branch Area Public Schools cancel classes Thursday due to power outage

North Branch Area Public Schools reports classes won’t be held on Thursday due to a power outage.

The school district is asking that no students, teachers, or staff arrive at school on Thursday due to the outage, adding that their early childhood programs, school-age care, community education programs, and all other activities would not be held.

According to East Central Energy, 807 customers are without power in North Branch, which supports a population of just over 10,000 people.

East Central Energy(ECE) currently lists the outage as an “emergency planned outage” for equipment repairs.

ECE told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS the power outage started before 4 a.m. when they experienced an equipment failure with broken insulators on multiple poles needing to be replaced.

Lineworkers with ECE, as well as with Great River Energy, have been working early Thursday morning to make the repairs and have been rerouting power to complete the repairs.

Power to North Branch has been restored according to the ECE outage map.