News

7/9/2009

Lyon-Coffey Electric Cooperative Working to Restore Power

As of 3:00 p.m., July 9, 2009, 772 Lyon-Coffey Electric Cooperative members in the Garnett, Richmond and Welda areas are still without power.

Winds topping 70 miles per hour blew through Franklin and Anderson counties yesterday afternoon causing extensive damage to the Lyon-Coffey distribution system.

Crews from Lyon-Coffey Electric and four neighboring cooperatives (Butler Rural, Flint Hills, LJEC and Radiant) worked through the night attempting to restore service. The high winds caused nearly 100 utility poles to break.

General Manager Scott Whittington stated, "The power to cooperative members in the Homewood area has been restored. We are currently working on replacing poles in Anderson County and southern Franklin County. Lyon-Coffey's restoration efforts are approximately 60% complete. Best case scenario is power will be completely restored tomorrow evening. Kansas City Power and Light lost several transmission line poles that provide electricity to our Welda substation. Their restoration efforts are also aggressively being pursued."

"If you decide it is convenient or a necessity to connect a generator to your house wiring, it's important that you are familiar with National Electrical Code requirements before connecting."

Your co-op linemen will usually de-energize a line or section of line before working on it. If your generator feeds back into a line they thought was safe, they could easily be killed or seriously injured. Please contact the cooperative office if you have any questions about connecting a generator.

The Cooperative is asking that any member that is without power to please call 1-800-748-7395 to report the outage.

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