Published: March 18, 2008 08:14 am      

Thousands left without power Monday

Monday morning began with a dim start for several businesses and residences along Lexington Road and Keeneland Drive.

A total of 2,160 Kentucky Utilities customers were without power Monday from 7:20 to 8:50 a.m., said Cliff Feltham, spokesperson for Kentucky Utilities.

“It came at the critical time of rush-hour traffic,” Feltham said.

“It (the outage) affected traffic signals along Keeneland and Lexington Road,” said Richmond City Manager David Evans. “We didn’t get a whole lot of calls (at City Hall), but KU has their 800 number. They (KU employees) went out there and had it back on quickly. They were quick to find out what the problem was and fixed it.”

The power outage was the result of an animal getting inside a connector box. This is a piece that keeps the electricity flowing along the grid up on the poles, Feltham said.

“We’re not sure of the exact locations, but it was there on the northwest side of town,” he said.

Animal interference, a squirrel to be exact, also was the cause of an outage in October 2007 that caused approximately 3,300 homes and businesses along the Eastern Bypass to lose power to four electrical circuits.

“Since our infrastructure is mostly above ground, birds, squirrels and raccoons can make connections with the right thing,” he said. “But usually, they’re lucky enough not to make those connections.”

Chapel Communications, 1212 W. Main St., provides Internet and e-mail services to 16,000 customers and was one of the businesses to be affected by Monday’s power outage.

“We have a back-up generator system, but we’ve grown to the point that it doesn’t power all the equipment now,” said Lee Murphy, Chapel Communication president. “We didn’t realize that until this morning.”

New servers and other necessary equipment are added each year to meet the demands of a growing customer base, Murphy said.

The company experienced only about 20 minutes without power.

Yvonda Matthews, office manager at Gateway Super Market, 1415 Lexington Road, was quick to respond when asked how the power outage affected the store’s morning operations.

“I can answer it in four words: It shut us down,” Matthews said. “We couldn’t do any of our prep work to open. Our registers wouldn’t even work. If it had been off all day, it would have been a true mess. We just had made us a pot of coffee, so we were good for a little while.”

Several measures can be taken to lessen the impact of temporary power outages on businesses and residences, according to information from KU.

Some tips include: Buy electronic equipment that comes with a battery back-up, periodically save or back up personal computer data to a disk to prevent loss of information and invest in an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).

During a momentary power outage, the UPS will continue to provide power to your personal computer for a period of time. (A UPS is not designed to operate your computer indefinitely — only long enough for you to save your work and shut down the computer properly.)

The Residential Service Call Center, 1-800-981-0600, is available to all KU customers and is the number to call to report outages. Reports can be made to the call center 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Ronica Shannon can be reached at rshannon@richmondregister.com or 623-1669, Ext. 234.