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Show i ' ! ' ' ' - ) -.;-CV - ' " 7 J'i J ' ; . ' t l - ' ' ; ? - , - ' , ' . . Bryce Valley High School students Mike Ahlstrom and Chance Stewart lift Thad Felt-ner Felt-ner up to put finishing touches on giant 11- Garkane personnel working out of the cooperative's Hatch and Kanab offices were granted only a brief reprieve from Mother Nature's fury this past weekend as heavy snow in eastern Garfield County again created havoc with power lines on Sunday, Jan. 10, lingering through Monday morning Jan. 11. After tracking down power outages out-ages most of last Thursday and Friday, Fri-day, Garkane linemen received some respite Saturday night before heavy snow and high winds renewed re-newed their assault on the state. Residents of Escalante found themselves without electricity for most of the night Sunday and woke up to six inches of new snow Monday Mon-day morning. Garkane's assistant t foot snowman they erected on Monday when school was cancelled due to 17-inch snowfall. It will take some melt down to clear creation. Snow Still Batters Garkane Lines general manager and manager of operations, Carl Albrecht, said most of the town had lights by 6:30 a.m. Monday. The communities of Boulder, Henrieville, Tropic and Bryce Canyon also experienced intermittent in-termittent periods without electricity. electric-ity. "The heavy wet snow in eastern Garfield County stuck to our lines, weighing down the conductor and putting a tremendous amount of stress on the lines," reported Albrecht. Al-brecht. Albrecht said when the wind started to blow, the lines would sway back and forth, subsequently causing the crusted snow to break off the line which resulted in a "bungee cord" effect on the wire. "As heavy snow broke off the lines, the wire would swing back unabated. If the snow comes off two parallel lines at the same time, the uncontrolled swaying of the wires makes it possible for them to slap together," he aid. According to Albrecht, if they do slap together, safety devices automatically turn the electricity off. "Utilities regularly install various vari-ous fuses and reclosures which are set up to detect short circuits on a section of line. If these sensitive devices recognize a problem, they automatically interrupt the flow of electricity to prevent further dam-See dam-See Garkane Lines Page 4A Garkane Lines From Page 1 age, " said AlbrechL I Albrecht stated these safety de-' de-' vices must be manually reset once they trip out requiring a lineman to access the apparatus and reset it to a normal operating position. "While we did have some lines break under the stress of heavy snow, and high winds, the majority of our outages were attributed to wires slapping together. We're glad for the moisture, but it's tough on power lines," Albrecht added. Albrecht praised Garkane's linemen for their efforts to restore power while working under adverse weather conditions. "Our crews have been laboring in some locations loca-tions waist deep snow trying to access ac-cess problem areas. While we recognize rec-ognize the inconvenience our customers cus-tomers face during a power outage, I feel our men have done an admirable ad-mirable job," concluded AlbrechL |
