Turkey Disaster Averted
It was almost a holiday disaster. Turkeys were in the oven and gravy on the stove when a tree interrupted a main transmission line in Florence yesterday cutting the power to 90 percent of the city. Central Lincoln PUD was on the break immediately and crews were dispatched. The outage happened around 11:15 in the morning and power was restored just before noon. Central Lincoln PUD went to twitter to assure residents that they were in process of dealing with the problem. The speed at which power was recovered was due in part to rerouting and redundancy according to a CLPUD Tweet. Later on in the evening at about 5:30 another tree cut power to about 10 percent of local customers in the Kingwood area. And two crews were dispatched two hours later for yet another loss of power. As of 4:30 this morning there were still about about 140 customers without power around the highway 101 and highway 126 area of Florence most of them along the east and west side of highway 101 and about a dozen homes in the green trees residential area.
Oven Fire in Green Trees
A fire in the green trees subdivision around 2:30 yesterday was contained. An apparent oven caught fire during the cooking of the holiday meal. Crews were able to keep the fire from spreading into the rest of the home.
Kiwanis Serves up Turkey
People were already filing in to the Elks Lodge 1858 yesterday morning when the power went out. Volunteers were scrambling to get set up for the annual Kiwanis thanksgiving meal for the community when the building went black. But with power restored the event opened its doors on time. The room stayed packed for two hours as a steady stream of residents came through for a meal of turkey, dressing, vegetables, mashed and sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. About 350 people were served and the turkey ran out as the last of the patrons were served. Organizers say 16 turkeys were consumed and a consideration of adding a couple more turkeys for next year had been discussed.
Weather Could Effect Power
High winds and rain pelted the city overnight last night including a couple of thunderstorms as a heavy rain band passed over. More rain and wind is expected to move through the area today. There is a possibility of more outages from trees and limbs today as saturated ground and wind could result in more toppled trees.
