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Show ! s ; - . .! " t ' " " ' ft I js j f r ,. -XH'Tk - 1 '-'- Smoke and steam billows from the CP National diesel plant West of Cedar City Wednesday. The plant's generators were put into quick action when an area-wide black-oui shut out the lights in most of Iron County. Outage 'could have been worse9 When the lights flickered, dimmed and finally went dark Jan. 8 throughout most ol Utah, things were not quite as had as they could have been, said CP National officials. vVhen Utah Power & Light lost power throughout its system late that morning. mor-ning. CPN hurriedly stoked up two small generation plants in Iron County and routed much-needed electricity to areas which needed it the most, said Gayle Adams, CPN district manager. Most of the state was without power lor approximately six hours when a fire ball Irom a trash lire at the Utah State Prison caused high voltage power lines overhead to arc and then quickly shut down the entire system. The shut-down, according to UP&L officials was unfortunate, but was much less of a disaster than if the automatic devices which switch power oil had not worked. Because of the devices no damage was done to the system, and power was restored to most parts of the state relatively quickly. CPN. which services the Iron County area, hurriedly lired up generators at the diesel plant west of Cedar City and the steam plant up Cedar Canyon. According to Adams, the two plants are able to produce 11.6 megawatts of electricity, but it does take some time to get them producing at lull capacity. It takes about :) minutes loan hour to Jire up the diesel plant, and it can take up to lour hours to get power Irom the steam plant on line, he said. However, power was quickly routed to areas which needed it Thursday, with some areas receiving power within a hall an hour. "The decision as to who you're going to turn power on to gets pretty critical," said Adams, and some people get angry that their lights aren't turned on first. The Valley View Medical Center was the top priority in restoring power said Adams, because the emergency generator there failed soon after the power lirst went out; but lines to the hospital could not be made "hot" lor sometime, lx;cause the southeastern part of the city is tied into the steam plant. Also receiving power quickly were dairies, which had to milk cows, and the downtown business area. Adams noted that the fact that lines must le "heated" a section at a time, beginning at the points nearest generation facilities, explains why some areas, notably Kanarraville, were slower to receive power al ter the black out than others. |