Thousands of Minnesotans still without power after Tuesday's storms
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About 15,000 Xcel Energy customers were still without power as of 12:30 p.m. Thursday.
That's down from about 250,000 after severe weather hit parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin Tuesday night. The company says about 95 percent of metro-area outages should be fixed by Friday night, except in cases where repairs to the home are needed.
Xcel regional vice president Kelly Bloch says over 1,000 workers are arriving from 17 states to help with repairs.
Severe weather elsewhere in the Midwest meant the company had to look as far away as Kentucky for help, she said.
"Our local utilities that we normally partner with were dealing with their own restoration efforts. There was a threat of severe weather which actually hit south into Iowa and Kansas last night, and so the local utilities for the most part were holding back their resources, as they should, and protecting their customers. We had to reach out beyond that level so there were longer drive times for these resources to get here," she said.
Bloch says damage includes broken power poles and is the heaviest the company has seen since severe storms in 2013.
"It's not the typical thunderstorm outages that we see here in the metro area. Typically, you know, maybe it's clearing one tree branch and putting a fuse back in. This is heavy construction that needs to be done," Bloch said.
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