Late-spring storms leave outages behind

Posted: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 8:53 pm
By: AP, staff reports

From AP, staff reports
Storms which moved through the state Tuesday left many without electrical power.
Gibson Electric Membership Corp.’s vice president of human resources and communications Rita Alexander reported about 2,600 customers in and around Troy, Hornbeak and Wynnburg were without electricity Tuesday morning. The outages, caused by wind and lightning, began at 11:55 a.m.
Crews worked throughout the morning to restore power, with all but around 60 being reconnected by around 2:30 Tuesday afternoon, with those remaining without electricty being those along Mill Creek and Yellow Hammer roads between Troy and Hornbeak. At the time, fewer than five customers in Tiptonville were without electricity.
GEMC was reporting all pow-er had been restored shortly before 4 p.m.
Scott Gilliam, director of office services for Union City Electric, said today that wind caused a 30-minute outage on the east side of the city on Tuesday, with between 300 and 400 customers affected.
An electrical outage reported on Sunday was confined specifically to the Pleasant Valley area and was not storm related. Gilliam said it was caused by an equipment malfunction.
A brief storm Tuesday also left at least 20,000 people without power in Middle Tennessee, mostly in the Clarksville area, but there were no reports of severe damage, the Associated Press reported.
Cumberland Electric Member-ship Corp. reported after the storm Tuesday that about 15,000 people in the Springfield and Gallatin areas lost power because several transformers were damaged.
Another utility, CDE Light-band, had about 4,000 people lose electricity, but spokeswoman Christy Batts told the Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville they expected to have most customers’ power restored this morning.
Nashville meteorologist Mark Rose said the National Weather Service received several reports of severe weather and funnel cloud sightings in Rutherford and Davidson counties.
Published in The Messenger 6.17.09