About 2,000 lose power in, near Town as tree downs lines, poles
Lenoir City Utilities Board crews reportedly responded quickly to fix the downed lines effecting 13 poles that had to be repaired.
“We had a tree fall on Canton Hollow Road, right outside of our Lovell Substation (about a quarter of a mile from the Canton Hollow Road/Kingston Pike intersection), and it took down a pole that had two (substation breaker feeder) circuits that would feed multiple customers,” said Jeremy Walden, LCUB director of electrical engineering and operations. “There were two on each pole, and (the tree) broke five poles.
“Our guys had to work an additional eight poles back to get everything rewired and everything, so 13 poles total (had to be repaired),” he said. “They had to switch around to Westland Substation and temporally feed some of it; but everybody up Canton Hollow that’s fed off of that (was) out until we (got) those poles repaired.”
Walden said he expected the repairs to have been completed around lunchtime Tuesday. He estimated about 2,000 people in the Concord Hills, Canton Hollow, Loop Road and Wood Road neighborhoods were affected by the outage.
“We got several of those (breaker feeders) on by switching around it from other substations, but the sections up Canton Hollow and all the branches off of Canton Hollow, we couldn’t because that’s the part that was down and broken,” he said. “We had to replace poles overnight.”
Walden surmised the tree fell because of moisture in the ground from the rain and the age of the tree.
“We get an indication here (at LCUB substation) that such and such a breaker is lost,” he said. “Then we send our crews out there. Obviously (the crews) pulled up on it and saw it.
“We got multiple crews out there,” Walden added. “It’s a major undertaking.
“When you got the side pole replacements and it’s got two feeders on each pole, and the congestion that there is out there on those poles, it can take six to eight hours per pole to replace.
Even with multiple crews working on the poles, “it takes a long time to get those poles replaced,” Walden said.
At 10 a.m., all of the poles were replaced or repaired except two.
“These poles held multiple vital connections leading directly to the Lovell Road substation,” said Bruce Thiem, director of integrated media for CMOco, the marketing agency for LCUB.
“Multiple crews were dispatched immediately, and replacement of the power poles began,” he added. “This morning, one of the poles partially fell again, and power had to be shut off to stand that pole back up safely.”
