DOWNED LINES DISRUPT POWER IN LARGE AREA

A large area of Cape Girardeau experienced a power outage during the noon hour Friday.

The outage affected the west end of the city, roughly from Kingshighway to West End Boulevard and from Broadway to Nash Road, said Union Electric spokesperson Susan Gallagher.

Gallagher said that approximately 5,000 customers were affected by the outage, which was reported to UE at 11:52 a.m. All but 150 customers had their electricity restored within 20 minutes, she said. Power to those 150 customers were restored after one hour and 20 minutes, she said.

A problem with a 34,000-volt line at Good Hope and Minnesota caused part of the line to fall onto a 4,000-volt line, said Gallagher. That overloaded a transformer, which shorted out, she said. One of the lines fell to the ground.

Kevin Orr, a spokesman for the Cape Girardeau Police Department, said police were notified at 11:56 a.m.

"We had numerous intersection lights that were out," said Orr. "We had to have officers direct traffic until power was restored."

Orr said that by 12:20 p.m. some of the intersection lights were back on and by 12:40 all lights had been restored. Officers who don't normally work the patrol division, such as training and community affairs officers, were sent to the lights, he said.

"All available officers assisted," said Orr. "Patrol officers continued to answer calls."

The Cape Girardeau Fire Department was dispatched to the downed wire at 11:56 a.m. "As a rule," said assistant fire chief Max Jauch, "any time power lines are down we go to the area to protect the citizens of Cape Girardeau from accidentally stepping on them."

Businesses in the area were also affected. "We were not able to do any transactions whatsoever for about an hour and 15 minutes," said Lee Ann Wright, customer service manager at Hastings in Town Plaza. "We held items customers wanted, and they had to return later to purchase them."

By 4:30 p.m., Wright said, all the customers had returned. "To compensate for the inconvenience," she said, "we issued Hastings rain checks for free fountain service and free video rentals. For us, it was a quick little exercise in customer service."

Wright said that the store came very close to losing a lot of transaction data from Thursday and from Friday up to the point of the outage.

"But our computer technicians in Amarillo were able to salvage the data for us," she said. "Fortunately, it was a very short power outage."