Widespread outages

Sidney residents experienced wide spread power outages this weekend due to two separate incidences which both damaged portions of the city’s power grid.

During the early morning hours of Saturday July 19 a vehicle ran into one of Sidney’s transmission lines just off of Haskell Hill Rd that feeds its south substation. The city had to take that line out of service in order to make necessary repairs.

Sidney asked that all citizens and businesses conserve energy that day until the line could be repaired. Power was out for 3 hours and fifteen minutes on Saturday, although the city worked to repair the damage for around 11 hours. Outages mostly affected those south of Toledo St., in the central and south portions of the city.

“Most of the business community was spared,” said City Manager Gary Person.

The interstate area and the north side were not affected by this outage. The estimated cost to the city is around $20,000-$25,000, said Sidney’s Electric Superintendent Mike Palmer.

The Western Area Power Administration assembled a team in Colorado which traveled to Sidney to assist with repairs. The outage could have lasted much longer without the administration’s help, Palmer said.

The swimming pool was closed for a time on Saturday due to the outage, but reopened that afternoon. The city contacted residents to inform them of the outage through Code Red, a program that alerts users through text message of local emergencies. Person encourages Sidney residents to sign up for the service on the city’s website for future such notifications.

On Sunday, one of the city’s electric poles on Fort Sidney Rd. caught fire and caused another outage which affected an estimated 50 percent of its power lead. The department is still working to discover whether it was a grass fire that traveled up the pole or if a spark from the distribution line caused the fire.

“We do know that it started on the ground and worked up the pole,” Palmer said.

A little after 8 p.m. on Sunday night the city had to cut the power to this line with no notice to customers in order to protect the safety of the fire fighters working to extinguish the fire. Customers on both the north and south sides of Sidney including the interstate area lost power for around an hour and fifteens minutes that night. The city thanked Sidney residence for their patience with the electricity issues over the weekend.

“We appreciate the public’s understanding,” Person said.

The city attempts to prevent any power outages, but cannot always do so in cases of accidents such as these.

“I really want to applaud the city departments that responded,” Person said.

He also touted the efforts of John Hehnke, public services director to coordinate work on the power lines.

The city electric department is still working to correct the damage from Sunday night’s fire, but there should be no more outages. If the city doesn’t have to replace the pole that caught fire, damage to the line will cost the city around $5,000, not including losses in revenue from the power outage. The electric department is still assessing the damage.