WINSIDE, NE -- Natural Gas customers in the Winside area are enjoying warm homes and hot showers after a service outage threatened to leave them in the cold during today's winter storm.

Black Hills Energy reported an outage around 4:00 Monday afternoon. The company says a third party damaged the pipeline supplying natural gas to the area.

A news release says Black Hills workers had to turn off about 230 gas meters, repair the pipeline, re-pressurize the lines, then visit each customer to re-light pilot lights.

The Winside American Legion opened its building to serve as a staging facility for the technicians.

Black Hills says the pipeline was re-pressurized around 9:30 and their work was done by 11:30 last night.