Published: December 02, 2008 10:12 pm      

4,600 lose power in Fayette County

About 4,600 people in the Fayetteville area lost power Tuesday, prompting officials to open an emergency shelter as outside temperatures dropped into the 20s.

A heavy equipment operator clearing land for a construction company in the Ames Heights area pushed a tree into a power line, bringing the line down and damaging some equipment in what was a “very unusual” incident, Appalachian Power Co. spokesman Phil Moye said.

“This is not a typical power line you would see running across the street,” Moye said.

He said it was a major transmission line that carries power at higher voltages to substations and then sends out reduced voltages to distribution lines.

“It’s very unusual to have an outage on a transmission line like this. It’s a much more involved and difficult job to get repaired,” Moye said.

Moye said crews expected to have the work completed around midnight, but the cold weather could cause it to be early morning today before all customers were back in service.

“In situations where the weather’s very cold and we’ve had a large number of customers out for an extended period of time, when we do re-energize the line, the amount of electrical demand is sometimes more than the line can carry, so the safety devices will cause it to go back out,” Moye said.

“We have to bring customers on in groups of 100 or 200 at a time.”

Moye said crews were able to address the problem quickly because the problem occurred in one area, in contrast to a storm situation where multiple areas are affected.

“It’s just a lengthy repair because of the type of equipment involved.”

Fayette County emergency officials opened a shelter at the Church of God multipurpose building in Fayetteville.

Meanwhile, a motor vehicle accident occurred Tuesday afternoon in Fayetteville at the intersection of U.S. 19 and Court Street, where the traffic lights were not working because of the power outage. Police could not be reached for details. Two other traffic signals on U.S. 19 in Fayetteville were also out.

— E-mail:

jayres@register-herald.com