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At roughly 9:20 a.m. on Tuesday morning,
the power in many areas south and west of downtown DeLeon flickered
and then stayed off.
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SOURCE
OF THE PROBLEM. A broken crossarm on the power pole behind
this truck caused a high voltage line to come in contact with the
ground and cut off electrical service. |
According to Paul Bennett, area manager
for TXU in Brownwood, TXU line crews were working replacing poles on a
high voltage distribution line along Highway 6 just west of DeLeon,
when a crossarm broke. The line supported by the crossarm fell to the
ground and shorted out, and triggered the automatic power shutdown.
At 10:25, TXU workers were able to reset
some breakers and restore power to 90% of the affected customers.
Although the power briefly flickered off
over much of the area, it stayed off in areas generally south of
Labadie and west of Austin streets. All three DeLeon ISD school
campuses were affected, as were businesses as far apart as the Highway
6 Cafe, Cross Timbers Community Health Center, Farmers & Merchants
Bank and Comanche County Telephone Company.
Some rural area customers served by
Comanche Electric Cooperative were also affected because of
interconnections between the two utilities.
There were no worker injuries reported in
the incident that precipitated the outage.
A second power outage occurred at 11:35
a.m., however, it was relatively brief in duration.
Any power interruption, no matter how
brief, however, plays havoc with businesses that rely heavily upon
electrically-powered equipment and computers to deliver their goods
and services, and endangers those who rely upon electrical devices for
health care purposes. |
