Storms down trees, cause outages

Two electric utilities provided outage reports following last week’s storm that blew through Wednesday, March 30.

The Northcentral Electric Cooperative office was under a tornado warning until 5:15 p.m. On Wednesday, just as outage reports began pouring in, according to director of marketing Michael Bellipanni. Once the warning was lifted, nearly 13 percent of its membership was without power, he said.

“The outages were concentrated mainly on two circuits from our Olive Branch substation – one circuit from the Byhalia station, and another on our East Cox Road station,” Bellipanni said. “We also had reports of wires down on Stateline Road and in the Matthews Corner area in Marshall County.”

More than 50 percent of outages were restored by 8 p.m. And by 9 p.m., outages were down to 14 separate cases affecting 219 members. Power was restored to all that could be restored around 12 a.m. Thursday, Bellipanni said.

Northcentral’s system held up remarkably well, largely due to pole replacements and rights-of-way maintenance in conjunction with Northcentral Connect’s fiber optics broadband project.

On Thursday and Friday, Northcentral sent a sevenman crew and five pieces of equipment to assist Coahoma Electric Power Association restore power west of Clarksdale and in northern Bolivar County.

Tim Powell, county administrator, said electricity was off at the jail and 911 offices and backup battery powered the facilities until power was restored.

He said he called Holly Springs Mayor Sharon Gipson, who sent crews out to get power restored.

A diesel-powered generator didn’t fire due to clogged filters, according to 911 director Stacey Reed.

Electricity was restored before the generator was required, she said.

North East outage report

“At our peak, we had 1,500 members without power,” said Sarah Bishop, communications and marketing manager for North East Mississippi Electric Power Association .

“Our most affected areas were Waterford, the Sardis Lake area, Springdale and West Oxford,” she said. “We had multiple trees down that brought lines down due to the high winds. All power was restored by 3 a.m. Thursday.”

Tree damage

County road manager Mario Jeffries provided some roads where trees were down. He said crews fanned out over affected areas and worked until about 11 p.m. Wednesday. Downed trees were mostly concentrated in District 2, 4 and 5, he said. Areas affected were Hernando Road, Beale Road, Isaac Chapel Road, Hubbard Road, Musgray Road, South Slayden Road, Duck Pond Road, Atway Road, Wilkins Chapel Road, Jack Thomas Road, Jones Grove Road, Joe Cox Road, Brumley Road and the Matthews Corner area, Jeffries said.

No one with the Holly Springs Utility Department was available to report on HSUD’s outages.

There were also several downed trees and some damage in the City of Holly Springs with personnel re sponding Wednesday evening and continuing to work later in the week.

About five cypress trees in Hill Crest Cemetery were destroyed and a number of others lost limbs or tops.