Thursday Outage Left 3 Fridley School Buildings in Dark for 90 Minutes

A Fridley School District official confirmed Friday that three district buildings were without electricity Thursday afternoon.

"Yes we lost power early yesterday afternoon for almost one and a half hours," spokesperson Jael McLemore said in an email. "The high school, middle school and the Fridley community center all lost power. It was an awful storm and I understand that other sections of Fridley also lost power."

That's true—more than 280 Fridley customers and  500 Fridley customers lost service early Thursday afternoon. (.)

What might have been a chaotic situation wasn't, according to Fridley Police Lt. Mike Monsrud, who said by email Friday:

Our School Resource officer was there during the outage and helped the students remain calm. No patrol officer were needed at the schools.

Fridley Assistant Fire Chief John Crelly said by email Friday that was also affected:

Upon returning to City Hall (midday) we were informed by staff that the emergency generators for City Hall had kicked on while we were gone. The fire department did not run on any storm related or Xcel power loss related calls, only medicals.

Xcel Energy spokesperson Mary Sandok said Thursday that the cause of the afternoon outage was a fire on a utility pole cross-arm, which may or may not have been storm-related.