About 2,500 customers lost power Tuesday morning in Superior's North End.
The outage was caused by an underground fault, which tripped all the feeders at the Winter Street substation, said Minnesota Power spokeswoman Amy Rutledge, speaking on behalf of Superior Water, Light and Power. The area north of downtown Superior was affected, she said.
Along Belknap Street, lighted signs shut off and a number of businesses had to lock their doors, including Holiday and Super One. Outages also were reported in East End and at Superior High School.
During the approximately 15 minutes power was out at Belknap Super One, employees stocked shelves by flashlight. Produce manager Tony Susnik led customer John Rice along with a flashlight, helping him secure watermelons and a bag of garlic in the darkened store.
"Tony always takes care of me," said Rice, of Allouez Marine Supply, who provides supplies to ships that dock in the harbor. "Everyone's real nice here."
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Superior Water, Light and Power crews were able to restore power to most customers within 45 minutes, Rutledge said. As of noon, they still were working to return power to the rest of the homes. The crew also was investigating the cause of the fault.
