A tree falling on power lines knocked out power to the city’s water wells on Haining Road and Long Lake Road Monday evening, causing a drop in water pressure and forcing city officials to issue a citywide boil water notice.

City water customers should boil their drinking and cooking water vigorously for two minutes or find an alternate source of water until the boil water notice is lifted.

The tree fell as a thunderstorm passed through the northern part of Warren County with winds, rain and lightning. Warren County Emergency Management Director John Elfer said there no severe weather warnings were issued Monday, adding, “It was one of those pop-up cells that occur.”

City Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman said it took city workers time to isolate the cause of the outage, “and by the time we did, the pressure had already dropped.”

“One of the problems is that we do not do electrical work (on power lines), and when something like this happens, we have to hire a contractor to the work,” he said. “These are lines similar to what Entergy has.”

For local restaurants, that means buying bottled water to sell to customers and to make coffee and tea.

“We’re using bottle water we bought to boil for tea, and we’ve shut down our fountain drinks and getting bottled water for customers,” said Chenara Brooks, director on duty at Chik-fil-A.

Vicksburg Warren School District spokesperson Christi Kilroy said the district “is following internal procedures in the schools affected by the Aug. 29 boil water notice caused by the power outage.

���These schools include Academy of Innovation, Bowmar Avenue Elementary, Vicksburg High School, Vicksburg Junior High School, Warren Junior High School, Warrenton Elementary and the Fresh Start Academy.

“Bottled drinking water is being provided to students and staff at these locations and cafeterias will continue to follow existing procedures for safe food preparation.”

Van Norman said city workers are taking samples of water from different areas in the city to the Mississippi Department of Health in Jackson for testing.