Clearwater Middle School and Safari Island community center in Waconia were closed Friday, Oct. 2, after an issue with an electrical panel outside the school was discovered the day before. There were periods of heavy rain on Thursday and into the evening and reports of some lightning, but it's unclear what may have caused the electrical panel doors on the four-foot tall feeder to be blown off their hinges and wiring inside the panel to be scorched. The school was closed all day Oct. 2. Safari Island re-opened at noon on Friday Oct. 2, according to the city. The pool was not expected to be functional until 4 p.m. on Friday.

The school and Safari Island community center were without power as of 9:40 p.m. Oct. 1, according to the city.

A generator that is designed to engage when power is lost from the power company did not work properly on Oct. 1 and attempts to get it started failed.

That caused school officials to call off classes at Clearwater on Friday, giving kids a rare unscheduled three-day weekend. Parents were notified by an e-mail early Friday morning, shortly after midnight, according to the school. But there were still plenty of parents who showed up Friday morning to drop off kids. That's when they discovered the school was closed.

Friday morning the school was able to get the generator started, but not in time to conduct classes at the school.

Cink said the school would be open for classes on Monday, Oct. 6.

The generator, which is as old as the building, which opened in 2001, has been used numerous times through years because the school participates in a peak energy use program through Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative, the school’s electrical provider at that location. That program allows the generator to provide the school with complete power, thus reducing a draw on Minnesota Valley Electric's resources during high consumption periods. "It has always worked perfectly. People can’t even tell when it’s happening. It’s that smooth. This time it was like a perfect storm of things happening and it just didn't work," said Cink.

The school is not sure if there was a lightning strike that may have caused the outage or if there were other factors involved. Crews were on the scene Friday attempting to restore full power and find a cause.

At Safari Island, which is connected to the school, there were an estimated 8-10 members still at Safari Island when the power was lost Thursday night. "When the power went out, the lights kind of flickered like the generator was trying to kick in, but then it went dark," said parks and recreation director Craig Sinclair.

He said all members were escorted out of the building without incident. The emergency lights came on and our staff had flashlights so it really didn't create any issues. Thankfully it was almost closing time for us." Safari Island closes at 10 p.m. Thursday nights.

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