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TMCNet: Lights out: 1,115 Creston homes 2 hours without power

[December 18, 2009]

Lights out: 1,115 Creston homes 2 hours without power

Dec 17, 2009 (The Creston News Advertiser - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- It started with a phone call to the Union County Law Enforcement Center dispatch center from a man reporting a "popping" noise at the Alliant Energy downtown substation near the intersection of Adams and Walnut streets.

Just before 7 p.m., the Creston Fire Department was dispatched to investigate the report, but no problem was found. Before long, phone calls reporting power outages began pouring into the dispatch center.

In all, 1,115 city and rural customers had lost power, and street lights and signals went black in an area mainly west of Sumner Avenue to the north of Jefferson Street and west of Oak Street south of the railroad tracks.

Soon thereafter, police officers began watching dangerous intersections and directing traffic as two crews from Alliant Energy scanned power lines and transformers in hopes of finding the problem's source.

It would take Alliant two hours before determining the cause of Creston's partial blackout to be an equipment failure at the downtown substation where overhead cables go underground.

"They isolated the problem last night and were able to make some temporary repairs to get customers back on," said Ryan Stensland, Alliant Energy spokesperson.

Stensland added that crews would be at the substation today attempting to make permanent repairs.

One thing Stensland pointed out as a positive about the outage was how customers reacted to the problem.

"In these types of outages, we always appreciate our customers calling in and using our voice-activated outage system," he said. "That helps us pinpoint the problem." Aside from the 354 customers who called Alliant, Shelly Gaiser, dispatcher at the Union County Law Enforcement Center, said she received more than 100 calls pertaining to the situation.

"We need to know, but they need to call Alliant," Gaiser said of customers who called to report the power loss. "If everybody expects us to call Alliant ... we can't keep up with that volume of traffic. It helps if they call Alliant." The Southwestern Community College student center was ready to take in residents who lost heat or needed shelter in the frigid temperatures during the power outage.

Mediacom For some of those fortunate enough to not lose power, a different problem surfaced -- the cable television was out.

Mediacom employee John Marquardt estimates about half the city lost cable and Internet services during the power outage.

Nodes and line extenders that move the cable signal down lines to residences run on suppliers powered by Alliant. According to Marquardt, five of the city's 11 nodes were down because of a lack of power.

"If that's in the area where there is no power, then everything down that line is off," he said. "Even though you don't have cable, you may have power." Marquardt said "it was a supervisors call" to wait for Alliant crews to restore power, because their estimated time to restore cable during the outage would have been longer.

"We kind of had to wait it out, because we didn't have enough equipment to power it up," he added. "When you're talking 10 to 12 power supplies, there's no way to get everything back on." Power was restored shortly before 9 p.m.

To see more of the Creston News Advertiser or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.crestonnewsadvertiser.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Creston News Advertiser, Iowa Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

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