NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — With both storms and potentially deadly heat in the forecast, neighbors in Cane Ridge and Antioch say they're worried about the potential for power outages on Thursday, especially after being left in the dark for hours during last December's winter storm, and facing several other outages in the months since.
"The fact we continue to see outages since December when the big outage happened, [with NES] saying the whole station went down, that explains it, but nothing explains all the ones since," said neighbor Cheryl Lewis.
NES issued a statement in response to questions from NewsChannel 5, saying:
"After conducting an internal audit, NES determined that a significant portion of the recent outages in the Cane Ridge area can be attributed to tree branches and other vegetative debris, vehicle accidents and severe weather conditions damaging power equipment. These sources were responsible for more than half of all recently reported incidents. The proximity of these events to the substation in that area and primary power lines resulted in a larger number of customers being affected.
"To remedy this, we are actively engaging in additional vegetation management planning to minimize potential impacts to the NES power-flow system. In addition, this spring, we performed various maintenance activities to improve overall reliability. Unfortunately, these actions contributed to some of the recently reported outages. All maintenance in the Cane Ridge area is now complete as well as a thorough inspection of all power distribution infrastructure. These actions help us proactively address issues before they become the cause of future outages. To date, we do not have a planned outage scheduled in the Burkitt subdivision or the Cane Ridge area."
