Many places lose power

Published 9:41 am Friday, February 21, 2014

About 600 customers lost power in Mankato, including a chunk downtown that affected several businesses.

In addition, there were roughly 700-900 Benco Electric customers without power.

Mike Heidemann, Benco’s operations manager, said the weather made it difficult to restore power quickly.

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“The travel is the tough part,” he said.

Ryan Stensland, spokesman for Alliant Energy, said about 1,200 customers in northern Iowa were without power Thursday afternoon, primarily because of the weather.

That number had increased to 2,700 outages in northern Iowa Thursday evening, according to the Alliant Energy website.

The website noted about 200 customers in Freeborn County were without power this morning.

Freeborn-Mower Cooperative Services reported about 980 customers were without power this morning.

— Mankato Free Press and Mason City Globe Gazette contributed to this report.