Residents of Gallatin awoke Sunday to find that their electrical power was either completely off or very sporadic. The outages started early Sunday and continued throughout the morning.
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Some sections of town were without power for 3-4 hours. Other sections had multiple outages throughout the morning. The electric crew and FEC personnel patched up the problem by bypassing the main breaker with fuses to stabilize the situation until the real cause could be found.
According to Zac Johnson, city administrator, the problem was located at a substation behind MFA Oil Company Monday afternoon, where one phase had been burned completely in two. That caused a short in the main breaker at the substation by the power plant. The breaker had probably earlier been struck by lightning. Johnson said it was like finding "a needle in a haystack."
The repairs were completed about 10 p.m. Monday night. Steve Reid, electric lineman, and other city personnel, as well as workers from Farmers Electric Cooperative and Ray Blakeley and Associates of Chillicothe, had been working to isolate the cause of the problem. They found the break on their fourth trip down to the substation, as they worked to pinpoint the location. They had narrowed it down to being between the power plant substation and the MFA substation.
Johnson expressed appreciation to Farmers Electric Cooperative and Ray Blakeley and Associates, as well as Roger Loxterman, for their help and expertise. Solving the problem was a collective effort.
The electricity did fail one time on Monday, but Johnson said it was due to some further testing that was being done.