A transformer failure at the Fort Peck Dam powerhouse in northeastern Montana touched off a grass fire, downed a live power line, and left more than 3,100 homes without electricity for several hours Thursday night, according to reporting by ktvq.com. No injuries were reported in the incident.

What Happened

Local emergency agencies arrived at the scene around 10:30 p.m. Thursday. The transformer blew at the Army Corps of Engineers-operated Fort Peck Reservoir Powerhouse, taking three hydroelectric generating units offline. Those units remained out of service for roughly four hours before power was restored.

The failure also knocked down a live power line and ignited a grass fire in the area surrounding the facility.

A Nearby Witness

Glenn Meier, a former Valley County Sheriff who served from 2002 to 2016, lives about two miles from the dam and said he witnessed the incident from inside his home. He told ktvq.com the explosion was both visible and audible from that distance.

“We got a blast of light that lit up our house in our backyard. And the explosion or the boom took place,” Meier said.

Based on what he observed, Meier told the Q2 News the fire appeared to be centered in the switch yard. “I’m a speculator, you know, you’ve got a fire in a switch yard, and it was very obvious to me that it did affect the transformer,” he said.

Investigation Underway

Both the Army Corps of Engineers and the Western Area Power Administration are involved in the ongoing investigation. Neither agency had determined the cause of the transformer failure as of the time of reporting.

Fort Peck Dam is a major piece of federal infrastructure on the Missouri River in Valley County. The powerhouse supplies hydroelectric power to a wide area of rural Montana, making an outage of this scale a significant disruption for the region.