North East sees outages

A heavy wind storm that blew through the area New Year’s Eve created widespread outages over the North East Mississippi Electric Power Association’s system, according to Jason Long, operations engineer with the cooperative.

“There were about 1,250 customers who experienced outages due to the storm,” Long said. “The largest area affected was about 750 customers in the Lafayette Springs and Thaxton communities.”

Outages included members in Lafayette, Union, Pontotoc and Marshall counties.

The main cause of the outages was high winds that blew trees over due to ground saturation from so much rain in recent weeks, he said.

A very large tree blew over on Lafayette CR 221, breaking a pole and tearing out a threephase line. Another tree blew over and broke a crossarm and took out a three-phase line along Highway 6 in Thaxton (east of Oxford), Long said.

In Marshall County 95 members were without power; 550 were out in Lafayette County; Pontotoc County had 570 members without power; and Union County had 35 members without power following the December 31 wind storm that hit at about noon.

Long said the first outages were reported around 11 a.m. and the last customers got restored around 9 p.m. The longest duration for power outage for sectionalized groups of customers was about seven hours, Long said.