Officials at Three Rivers Electric Cooperative said this week that public-caused outages are increasing.
There are two different types of power outages. One is the natural-caused outage that are caused by storms, trees and animals. The second is the public-caused outage that occurs when the power goes out due to automobile accidents, farm machinery that hits a line, or even trees that are cut and fall into a line.
"This is something that we are extremely concerned about," said Three Rivers Electric Cooperative Safety Coordinator Bill Wibberg. "Electric safety is something that is extremely important to us, which is why we continually take our message to schools, civic organizations, churches, fire, police and ambulance departments. We need to make sure we always respect electricity."
On Sunday there were five outages throughout the cooperative's territory and of those, three were public-caused outages.
There were 169 members who were out of power when a co-op member cut a tree that fell into a power line in the St. Anthony area.
Another outage occurred when a brush hog came into contact with a pedestal that houses the co-op's equipment to carry underground power lines to a ball field in Taos.
The third public caused outage occurred when a power pole broke after it was hit by a car. That outage affected 432 members for 3 hours and 25 minutes in Gasconade and Franklin counties.
"What we want everyone to remember is that electricity is a great tool, but it can also be extremely dangerous and cause serious injury or even death," Wibberg said.