Although the Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative Area escaped the devastation that Florida and Alabama residents experienced from Hurricane Ivan last week, the high winds and heavy rains that came in as the storm died out left approximately one-third of SVEC’s nearly 32,000 members without power for a least a short time. Marion and Grundy Counties were the hardest hit with up to fifty-percent of customers in those areas out at one point. The main cause for the outages were lines pulled down by fallen trees, poles broken by high winds or by trees falling on them.
SVEC linemen and contract crews began answering calls on Thursday afternoon and worked through the night into Friday, Friday night and Saturday with the last customers reconnected early Sunday morning.
The outages from this storm reinforce our commitment to keeping our right of way under control by adopting a cycle-based program of clearing and pruning. This means clearing the entire length of a power line on a regular basis instead of trimming only a small section of the line or individual trees.
People often ask us, “Why do trees have to be trimmed?” It becomes quite clear after a storm such as we had last week that we must trim them to reduce outages. Nearly one-third of power outages each year nation-wide can be traced to tree interference. In severe storms, tree-related damage accounts for two-thirds of the power outages. In our area it is probably even higher than that.
We trim trees to ensure your safety and maintain reliable electric service. The electricity flowing through power lines poses no danger to you until it comes in contact with something that is grounded. A ground is the earth or something touching the earth- like a tree. When a tree, or other grounded object comes in contact with the power line it, provides an alternate path for electricity to flow through, creating a safety hazard and reliability concern.
We know that no one wants to be without power and we do all that we can to keep the power on. We appreciate the cooperation of our members and the hard work of our employees during stressful times such as storms we hope that we can count on your cooperation with our right-of-way program as well. If all goes as we expect with this new emphasis on clearing hopefully the next time we are hit with a storm the outages will be fewer.