Dec. 28—JAMESTOWN — About 50 customers of Northern Plains Electric Cooperative in Jamestown were still without power as of 10:45 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 28, but power was expected to be restored by the end of the day, according to Seth Syverson, general manager.

Syverson said power was restored at Countryside Estates — located east of the U.S. Highway 52/281 bypass and north of Jamestown Regional Medical Center.

He said some customers were without power since late Tuesday, Dec. 26, but a majority didn’t have power since Wednesday morning. He said the length of time customers were without power varied.

Power was restored to customers of Otter Tail Power Co. in Jamestown on Wednesday, Dec. 27.

Otter Tail crews were still working to restore power to rural areas on Thursday. As of 4 p.m. Thursday, areas with an estimated time of power being restored are: Cleveland, 6 p.m. Thursday; Fingal, 8 p.m. Thursday; Gackle, 8 p.m. Thursday; rural Gackle, 6 p.m. Thursday; Medina, 6 p.m. Thursday; Millerton, 10 p.m. Thursday; Montpelier, 10 p.m. Thursday; Nolan, 10 p.m. Thursday; Nome, 8 p.m. Thursday; Page, 10 p.m. Thursday; rural Page, 10 p.m.; Pillsbury, crews patrolling; Streeter 6 p.m. Thursday; and Windsor, 5 p.m. Thursday.

Employees of the city of Jamestown have also been busy dealing with the aftermath of the ice storm, according to Tyler Michel, public works director.

“If we have time to send people out in the blades, we have been, but the last couple of days we are kind of trying to keep the storm drains open and trying to get the streets cleared and keeping the sand trucks operating,” he said.

The city’s two sand trucks have been out sanding streets since about 3 p.m. Christmas Day, Michel said.

“They’ve pretty much been going since then with both of our sanding trucks trying to keep the main streets, main thoroughfares open, sanded,” he said. “We generally don’t do sanding in residential areas but we have been as people call and if we got a hilly area intersection or something like that we are doing some select areas.”

With higher temperatures on Thursday and expected again on Friday, Michel said city staff are hoping the majority of the ice will melt over those days.

“In some of the areas with slush, the blades are going out and about as we have time because we are also trying to keep storm drains open as well and then to try to prevent some localized flooding,” he said.

He said street department employees have been clearing ice from storm drains with a motor grader or payloader or some other type of equipment to get the water to flow into them.

City workers have also been called to North Dakota One Call sites.

“We have to go locate our water, our sewer, our storm sewer and our electrical lines that may be near that pole so that’s another thing that draws people away from doing other things too,” Michel said. “There’s all these different things that happen that we have to keep staffed or keep going, so really that takes one or two people from each department to go and do One Call locates and when you are trying to do all these other things, it really takes away from what you can get done in a day.”

The city also removed water and sewer restrictions on Thursday, Dec. 28. The city had asked residents to reduce water and sanitary sewer usage until power was fully restored.

Michel said the city sent a public service announcement on those restrictions because the pump stations don’t work when there is no power and the lift stations could have had sewer back up if they overfilled.

He said it would take a lot of usage to empty a water tower and city staff wasn’t sure how long the power outage would be in effect.

“Otter Tail was trying to give us a good timeline but they couldn’t be certain of it so we wanted to make sure we didn’t empty a water tower (in) one particular area of town,” Michel said. “If there would have been a fire in that location, we might not have had enough water to fight a fire.”

City workers also cleared the streets of any downed tree branches to keep the roads open without obstacles. He said the city doesn’t have the staff to pick up other branches that might have fallen at residences.

Residents can take tree branches to the city baler and landfill drop-off site at 3020 18th St. SE.

“The City of Jamestown reminds residents that it’s the responsibility of property owners to remove debris from their own property following a weather event,” according to the city’s public service announcement issued Thursday, Dec. 28. “The City does not collect tree branches or debris.”

Garbage and recycling collection in Jamestown resumed Thursday. Wednesday’s garbage and recycling routes were collected Thursday. Thursday’s routes will be collected on Friday, Dec. 29.

Crews are expected to collect Monday’s and Tuesday’s routes on Thursday and Friday, Dec. 28-29, following their regularly scheduled routes.