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The Weakley County Press

Power surge wreaks havoc in Dresden

By Laura Lytle

Staff Writer

Tuesday night will "burn" in the memories of many Dresden residents for some time to come. Power lines were glowing, fires were burning, lights were out, and many minds were wondering if tonight was "the night."

Emergency Management Director David McAlpin said it looked like a scene out of "The Twilight Zone." "My neighbor came home and thought the end of the world was here," he said.

What residents saw were electrical lines glowing blue and yellow from an overloaded system, said Dresden fire chief Dickie Hart. "The lines would arc and send sparks to the ground and, in some cases, actually broke and started a fire."

The overloaded system occurred when a breaker malfunctioned at a substation, a Weakley County Municipal Electric System

spokesman said.

Fire fighters responded to five fires within a 20-minute span.

Hart said the two biggest blazes were on Evergreen Street, behind the cable company's tower, and on Davis Memorial Road. "They were grass fires but were in a wooded area," he said.

Two more grass fires broke out on Cedar Street and Linden Street. The fifth fire was at a home on Maple Street where the electrical surge started a fire.

Other area fire fighters were called in from Sharon, Latham, Martin, Como/Ore Springs, and Gleason fire departments, as well as the Forestry Service, to assist in controlling the fires. Greenfield's fire department was on stand-by.

While fire fighters were battling blazes, many residents were left without power for more than an hour and some sustained damage to appliances from the power surges.

Despite the outage and troubles, 911 service was only partially affected.

"We were just half-way down. We were able to get the number (of the caller) and have a conversation but the automatic location wasn't working," said McAlpin.

He said that they can still identify the location of the caller even when the automatic location service isn't working properly. "As a last resort, we always have an 800 number we can call to obtain the information," he said.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 1999

Answers

Joe, I think any information about this problem would have to come from the local utility and/or generating utility. Weakley County, Tennesee, has a Municipal Electric system whose generating source is the Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA), a federally owned utility.

( http://www.tnedc.org/cgi-bin/php.cgi/counties/display.html )

There's a number for inquiries on the TVA site (TVA News Desk - 423-632-6000) but it's only supposed to be used by journalists.

The TVA Year 2000 info is at: http://www.tva.gov/y2k/y2kfaqs.htm

Whatever the cause, "power lines glowing" _would_ have made the scene look like something out of the Twilight Zone -- and I can imagine how frightening it would have been. Hopefully, there will be more news reports about this with something about the cause(s).

-- Anonymous, September 11, 1999