Lost power from the storm

I had lost power from last Saturday's storm.  Our power was out from about 6 pm until almost 10 am the next day.   The reason - other than over 10,000 customers losing power - was that the trees that went down in my yard fell on the power lines which caused the power pole to break.

I had called in to the electric co-op about my loss of power but only got their automated outage service and not a real person.  So I couldn't give the power company a heads up about the broken power pole.

The electric co-op company workers arrived at 11:45 pm.  I was sleeping on the loveseat so I noticed their arrival as they flashed their spotlights all around in an effort to figure out the situation..  I went outside when they stopped at the power pole and explained the situation to them, where the lines on my property were located, the gate they could use, and that I had horses in the pasture.

After checking everything out they left one vehicle behind to watch over the broken power pole and lines.  I went back to sleep on the loveseat.  I woke up around 4 am when they walked in to fix the broken lines by the house.  They had put the new pole in the ground and attached the lines running along the road.  They were ready to work on the lines to my house.

Each of the two lines had two breaks which they needed to patch.  Then from the road they pulled the line back up into place.

While they worked on reconnecting the lines at the power pole I explained the tree grazed the top of the three lines that run from the house to the small power pole that feeds into my well's pump.  The insulator for the top line was broken and the line pulled away from the pole.  Amazingly this very old line did not break. It did hang down.

While this is my line and not the electric company's line, I explained to the foreman that when they re-energized their lines this line would be re-energized.  They didn't want to handle my line and wanted to turn the breaker off to this line.  Ummm...  I have a very old electrical system.  While the house has breakers for the lines that go into the house, I showed him there was no breaker on the line until after it reached the small power pole.  The foreman then decided it would be quicker and safer to have one of his men fix my wire as it looked to be a simple quick fix.  No sense chancing that my line could short and take out the electricity when the other lines were re-energized.

Initially the guy assigned to fix my wire thought he would have to drive his bucket truck to the power pole.  He was concerned about fitting under my driveway sign.  After looking he thought his truck would fit.  But he then thought of checking the pole and wire out.  He found that he could climb the pole and pull the wire to re-attach it.  Making the task easier was that the affected wire turned out to be the neutral wire.  A simple quick 5 minute fix for someone with electrical experience.

Someday I will replace these wires as they are very old.


Here is how the new pole looks now.  The electric co-op workers are hard working and did an excellent job in fixing the power lines.