Last Thursday evening, in the middle of a snowstorm, Meeker residents reported seeing a bright flash of light on the east side of town just before the power went out throughout town and into rural areas like County Roads 7 and 43.
According to White River Electric Association (WREA) Manager of Operations Brett Berthelson via email, “Thursday evening’s outage was caused by a failed cutout (which is a combination of a fuse and a switch used on overhead lines to help protect transformers from surges and overloads) across from Watt’s, and near the BLM office. Ideally, a cutout failure would have caused an outage for WREA members on that circuit only. Consecutively, however, a breaker in the Town of Meeker substation on the west end of town failed to do its job which resulted in a fault to the main transformer within the Town of Meeker substation. That fault ultimately took all circuits down and caused the Town (and many rural areas) to go dark in an instant.”
Nine WREA linemen went to work to restore power, which was out for 27-35 minutes for most members, with some areas east of Meeker out for approximately 90 minutes.
“WREA linemen worked to diagnose, replace and test the equipment within the substation before restoring power — one circuit at a time. The step-restoration helps ensure that each circuit is stable and safe as power is restored,” Berthelson said, adding that reporting of the location of observed light flashes to dispatch by citizens helped WREA quickly respond and troubleshoot the cause of the outage.
WREA Member Relations Supervision Kari Matrisciano commented, “WREA is overwhelmed by the support of the community while they patiently waited for power to be restored, especially given the fact that many were mid-dinner prep at that time. Our members are always quick to report outages or concerns, eager to share information that might be helpful and always share their gratitude with our hard-working lineman. We couldn’t ask for a more supportive community.”
