Repair work will be ongoing in Coffey County over the next several weeks after strong overnight storms Thursday led to hundreds of Lyon Coffey Electric Cooperative customers being without service for the majority of the day.
LCEC Director of member services Mike Tweedy says outage reports started coming in around 1 am and by 6 am it was apparent they had nearly 900 customers out of power.
Tweedy says while the storm itself was not as big as some, it was still significant with over 60 mile per hour wind gusts bringing down roughly 20 poles. He says the most significant damage was contained to a roughly five-mile radius within Burlington.
Tweedy says they knew they were going to be short-staffed compared to the amount of work required. However; thanks to pre-consolidation efforts with Radiant Electric Cooperative, he says all it took was a phone call to get some extra manpower on scene.
Tweedy says the amount of work crews have put in since Thursday is just the tip of the iceberg as a significant amount of repair work remains. According to Tweedy there are numerous poles along US Highway 75 still leaning due to the high winds. On top of this Tweedy says the high winds also brought down numerous conductors in the area.
Tweedy anticipates the full scope of work will take roughly six weeks to complete, weather permitting.
