Telegraph note: This story went to press prior to the storms Tuesday (May 21) evening which knocked out power again to the community of Dysart as well as surrounding communities. Power has since been restored, again.

DYSART – Despite a sunny forecast, last Wednesday featured some ‘dark’ times in Dysart.

Just before 11 a.m. on May 15, Dysart Public Works received word of an incident in town involving a tractor and a utility pole, public work’s superintendent Dave Schneider told the newspaper in a written statement on Friday.

“Upon investigation of the scene, it was found that a tractor with a planter attached had struck a pole in the 700 Block of Sherman Street,” Schneider explained.

The accident took place near the northwest corner of Dysart City Park.

Soon thereafter, public works notified Traer Municipal Utilities (TMU) which responded immediately and “began preparations to make the necessary repairs and restore power throughout the town.”

While not everyone in town lost power, many experienced at least a partial loss of power, leading the City of Dysart to issue an alert on Facebook.

“If you have partial power in your house, shut your main breaker off to prevent any surges,” the City posted. “Crews are on their way to make repairs but it may take several hours to fix. Please avoid the Crisman/Sherman intersection. This area will be closed to traffic. Thank you for your patience.”

As morning stretched into the early afternoon, both the school district and Little Knights Learning Center made the decision to close with Union CSD releasing early at 1 p.m. and Little Knights closing after two hours of no power, per DHS regulations.

Other businesses and entities also had to scramble due to the outage including Norma Anders Public Library which, while open, was only able to offer checkout services.

Schneider said repairs undertaken during the outage included “replacing the broken pole, repairing damage done to the cross-arm at the top of the pole directly east of the pole that was struck, and fixing a blown fuse at the city’s substation.”

Schneider further said that it was damage to the blown fuse that led to the low voltage issues throughout town.

All told, the outage lasted approximately five-and-a-half hours before Dysart was back in the light.

“TMU was able to restore electricity to the town around 4:30pm,” Schneider said. “The City of Dysart would like to thank TMU, FCTC [Farmers Cooperative Telephone Company], Mediacom, and Alliant Energy for their quick responses, which enabled power to be restored in a short timeframe.”