Q. What 1995 Chattanooga visitor rudely turned out the lights on thousands?
A. The headline in the The Chattanooga Times on Oct. 6, 1995 summed it up nicely: “Opal leaves and turns out the lights.”
Hurricane Opal was a tropical depression by the time it moved through the Scenic City on the morning of Oct. 5, 1995, a Thursday, but it still caused plenty of problems.
“It was the biggest electricity outage in the area since the blizzard of March 1993. And many homeowners may remain without power through much of the weekend,” said the Times article the next morning. “Nearly 100,000 residences in the tristate region woke up Thursday morning in the dark.
“Electric Power Board customers in northern Hamilton County, Red Bank, North Chattanooga, Signal Mountain, Middle Valley, Harrison and Ooltewah lost power,” the story continued. “By midafternoon when the skies cleared, more than one-third of the outages were repaired. But some scattered power outages could continue until Sunday.”