BROOKINGS – Two power outages that hit Brookings’ northside and affected the South Dakota State University campus within the past week were flukes, according to Russ Halgerson, Brookings Municipal Utilities electric department manager.

“They were completely unrelated. Just kind of unfortunate timing on both of them,” Halgerson said.

The first outage started about 3:45 p.m. Saturday and covered parts of northwest Brookings and the SDSU campus, Halgerson said.

“We had a substation go offline unexpectedly due to an equipment malfunction,” he said. “Just a lot of melting. We had some snow on a piece of equipment. When it thawed out, it got into some electrical connections and … it caused damage to a piece of equipment. So it wasn’t flooding related or anything like that.”

Power was restored in stages, with most getting their power back by 5 or 5:30 p.m., and SDSU being the last to get power by 6:15 p.m., he said.

“We identified it and we’re working on repairing it right now,” Halgerson said.

The second outage started about midnight Tuesday.

“A raccoon got into one of the substations,” causing the outage,” Halgerson said.

This one affected most of northeast Brookings along with parts of SDSU, he added.

“We went out there. We were able to safely clear the outage and restored power just after 1 a.m.,” Halgerson said.

“It was kind of a fluke incident and I don’t expect any ongoing issues related to any of … these outages,” he added.

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.