A quiet evening was interrupted when a major power outage occurred that impacted utilities in Trenton, Grundy County, and elsewhere.
Just after 8 p.m. Wednesday, the outage began and involved customers of Trenton Municipal Utilities, Evergy, and Grundy Electric Cooperative.
Trenton Municipal Utility Director Ron Urton reported a tractor knocked down the NW Transmission line feeding all customers. The location was along Pauper Grade Road just north of Trenton. The tractor’s impact caused a fire to erupt, and black smoke could be seen in the sky several miles from Trenton.
In the case of TMU, Urton explained NW Electric crews re-routed electricity to the electric plant substation. TMU customers were without power for about one hour and Evergy customers were without power for a couple of hours.
The outage also interrupted our broadcasts on KTTN AM and FM and KGOZ FM. The downtown Trenton studio is powered by Trenton Municipal Utilities while the KTTN tower site on Route Y east of Trenton is powered by Evergy.
Grundy County’s Emergency Management Director Glen Briggs reported all power was restored by 10:30 Wednesday night. There are several thousand TMU customers. Information Briggs provided indicates the outage affected 800 Evergy customers and another 800 rural members in portions of Mercer, Grundy, Sullivan, Livingston, and Linn counties.
