News

7/10/2009

Lyon-Coffey Electric Cooperative Storm Restoration Nearly Complete

As of 3:00 p.m. this afternoon approximately 95% of the restoration repairs to lines serving Lyon-Coffey Electric Cooperative consumers in Anderson County are complete. Although there are still 772 Cooperative consumers without power in the Garnett, Richmond and Welda areas, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Cooperative consumers in Anderson County and parts of southern Franklin County have been without power since Wednesday afternoon as a result of the high winds that blew through the area causing extensive damage to Lyon-Coffey Electric's distribution system.

Crews from Lyon-Coffey Electric and four neighboring cooperatives (Butler Rural, Flint Hills, LJEC and Radiant) are still working diligently to get poles replaced and lines in the air. The high winds caused nearly 100 utility poles to break; several of them were main three-phase feeder poles.

General Manager Scott Whittington stated, "The storm also did severe damage to Kansas City Power and Light transmission lines that serve our Welda substation. KCPL crews and several contract crews are aggressively tackling their restoration efforts with hopes of having our substation energized later tonight. That was our goal, to have our lines ready when the substation was energized and we have met that goal."

"In case you notice that your neighbor has electricity and you do not; please call 1-800-748-7395 to report any outages. There is always that possibility that there is something out there that will cause problems that we may have missed in our restoration efforts."

"I would like to remind everyone again about hooking up temporary generators. 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."

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