Ice begins to form on trees on Signal Mountain. Hundreds of homeowners lost power on Signal Mountain as ice began to cling to trees at the higher elevations, depriving fewer than 500 customers of electricity just before 6 p.m.
EPB responded quickly and reduced the number of customers without power to fewer than 200, though the ice on tree limbs and on power lines could continue to cause outages.
EPB spokesman John Pless at 6:05 p.m. said that 111 total customers were affected by about two dozen scattered, small outages on Signal Mountain.
“Most are brief, caused by limbs and branches getting weighed down by ice and contacting power lines,” Pless said.
All EPB’s crews are being held over through the night, he said,
“We have had crews dedicated to Lookout, Signal and Montlake Mountains throughout the day, since that’s where most ice accumulations have been,” Pless said.
The utility’s Smart Grid system can quickly switch customers from a bad line to a good line, turning most outages into a brief flicker of lights. However, power lines that are physically damaged by nature must be manually repaired, and if no alternate lines exist then it requires an actual crew to come repair the problem before power is restored.
Report outages to EPB at 423-648-1372 or email webeditor@timesfreepress.com.