Where's My Power?

Orange Emergency Management Director Fred Palmer asked on Friday for every resident to be prepared for possibly being on their own for 72 hours due to the wrath of Hurricane Irene.

In recent Patch articles, residents were urged to get water, non perishable food items, batteries and flashlights and stock up on their medications.

Palmer said trees could be down and that would prevent emergency crews from getting to them.

The Town Emergency Shelter has been open since 5 p.m. on Saturday, and by 11 p.m. 5 residents already had taken advantage of that opportunity.

That said, what happens when we lose power? How long will it be before it’s restored? And the most commonly asked question. “When is the UI coming?”

John Albini from the UI said the company’s storm center has been open since Wednesday, Aug. 24 in anticipation of this storm.

Albini said the UI has a strict restoration priority list that it must adhere to in difficult times such as this.

He said each city and town gets to choose two places that are priority spots, such as an emergency shelter or other important places that do not have emergency generators.

“Police and fire departments have generators, as does the High Plains Community Center,” he said. “Burning wires in the street also are a top priority, because it poses a safety issue.”

Albini said the next in line are incidents with the largest amount of customers for the smallest amount of work.

“If we can replace a circuit and restore power to 2,000 – 3,000 people, we will do that first before we would do three hours work to help 500 people,” he said. “We’ll do main lines, then as we do them, we’ll find side caps off of those that are damaged. Customers get upset because they see that the power is on in one area, and if they live around the corner and are on a different circuit and still don’t have power they will complain.”

Broken poles, and replacing them takes much more time to repair, he said.

“In every storm there’s someone who’s first and someone who is last,” Albini said. “This is a massive storm. It’s larger than Gloria (in 1985) and it’s carrying a lot more water. It’s going to be tough. We’ll do the best we can. I’ll be working 14-hour shifts.”