About 500 Cheney Light customers in the north end of the city were without power for part of Sunday after a vehicle struck a main switch cabinet on the southwest side of North Sixth Street in front of the Cheney School District transportation yard.
Cheney Police Department Cmdr. Rick Campbell said at 7:01 a.m., dispatch received a call of a vehicle that had failed to negotiate a left hand turn off Betz Road onto North Sixth Street due to icy conditions and struck the cabinet. The driver of the vehicle was uninjured, but the impact inflicted major damage to the cabinet, causing a short circuit that tripped a major power feeder to the city, Light Department Director Joe Noland said.
Power was out from Cheney High School north on North Sixth, including Golden Hills, along with the Nolan-Brown area, Cheney Care Center, Avalon Estates, The Orchards, Normal Park and parts of Betz Road. Noland said power crews isolated the switch box and then created a temporary feed, using a back feed to restore power to some customers from Cheney’s south-end substation and the rest from the original source.
“About half the customers were restored to power around noon and the remaining customers were restored just before 3 p.m.,” Noland said in an email.
The repairs are temporary in nature, he added, and will require another power outage to make permanent.
“This outage will happen sometime later this year and will be advertised in advance of the outage,” Noland said.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
Reader Comments(0)