By Mark Potter Staff Writer Southwest Ledger
FREDERICK – Nearly two-thirds of the 2,000 residential and business customers of the municipally owned City of Frederick electrical system were without power for most of the day Sunday, Aug. 30, due to damage that tripped off the system.
City Manager Robert Johnston said the outage began around 9:30 a.m. after a re-closure, which he described as a large circuit breaker, had been tripped off by a squirrel that made its way into a substation.
Johnston said that loss of power had followed a previous early morning outage caused by a windstorm around 2 a.m., for which power was restored to customers around 4:30 a.m. by crews from the Western Farmers Electric Cooperative of Anadarko, which operates the transmission system that delivers electricity to the city of Frederick.
“Then, a squirrel had gotten into the substation and went on top of the reclosure,” he said.
Johnston said a new re-closure had to be shipped by vehicle from Fairview to Frederick and then installed at the substation.
The city manager said that Frederick’s utility workers were assisted by outside reinforcement crews throughout the day Sunday. He added that crews had many challenges throughout the day in their efforts to restore power, which included additional losing customers power later on due to a damaged crossbar. Those customers were in the southeast portion of the city who were not affected by previous outages, he said.
Johnston confirmed that electrical power was restored to Frederick homes and businesses by 6 p.m.
“Fortunately, our customers were patient with us over that time,” he said.