Excessive winds brought down overblown trees on power lines, causing multiple outages across Garkane’s service territory on Sunday night, May 8. Garkane crews worked throughout the afternoon and evening restoring the outages in Kanab, that affected multiple neighborhoods. In addition, there were outages in Orderville, Hatch, Spry and throughout Wayne County. Crews restored power to most of the areas by the evening time.
Additionally, on Tuesday, May 10, at approximately 5:30 p.m., high winds knocked off an arrestor in the Fredonia substation that feeds all of Kane County and Garkane’s southern system. Crews patrolled the lines and found the fault where a lightning arrestor wire was blown loose making contact with another line. Automatic safety protective equipment contained in the substation cut power off, which caused the extended outage in Kane County and northern Arizona including Moccasin, Jacob Lake, and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Power was restored to most places by 7:30 p.m. that night. Sporadic, smaller outages continued in the Kanab Creek Ranchos where power was restored by 9:00 p.m., and a few by midnight.
After experiencing such excessive winds, we’re fortunate there weren’t more down trees that fell into power lines. Garkane has an extensive tree trimming schedule that works to prevent trees and branches from reaching power lines, thus reducing potential power outages. Although it’s impossible get them all, Garkane crews work hard to manage the conditions the best we can.
We appreciate the patience and understanding of our members during extended outages.
