On one hand, power had to be restored to affected Spinnaker Bay residents, but repeatedly resetting the electrical system was a potential hazard, experts say.
By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published September 24, 2003
OLDSMAR - It could have been a lot worse for some tenants left in the dark by power outages at the Spinnaker Bay apartments last weekend.
While residents fumed that the electricity was sporadic, at best, and waited for answers, maintenance workers struggled to keep power flowing. In doing so, one said, they tried to strike a balance between restoring power and preventing faulty electrical equipment from starting a fire.
When the electrical wiring got too hot, a breaker would cut power to Spinnaker Bay Building 34 and its eight tenants.
Then the residents complained.
And workers would reset the system.
It happened over and over Saturday, Sunday and part of Monday. The apartment manager even told a maintenance worker to camp out by the breaker box, if necessary, to minimize outages.
Eventually, maintenance worker Tony Slaughter decided to stop resetting the system. He said electricians had told him that it was risky and could lead to a fire. He also stopped answering residents' pages, something that cost him his job Monday.
As it turned out, another worker reset the system after Slaughter stopped, and there was no fire.
On Tuesday, however, the master electrician whose company repaired the problems said Slaughter's decision was a "wise choice."
"Anything that's resettable could and should be reset," said Allan Himes, owner of A & H Electrical Services Inc. of Tampa. "But after a while you have to get leery of resetting things."
Himes said deterioration in the main service disconnect could have created an electrical explosion. That means each time maintenance workers temporarily restored power by resetting a lever outside the building's electrical box, a fire could have erupted.
Power was off again Tuesday while Himes' company replaced malfunctioning parts. That work was finished Tuesday evening and power was restored.
Apartment manager Linda Baird told residents they will be reimbursed for costs they incurred because of the outage. On Monday, she fired Slaughter, who was on call when the outage was first reported.
Baird said Slaughter did not answer residents' pages for service and refused to reset the system.
Slaughter said he reset the system six times Saturday. In that time, he talked to at least two electricians and had one onsite who said the system wasn't safe, he said. When power went out early Sunday morning, Slaughter had enough.
Slaughter didn't answer pages and wouldn't reset the system anymore.
He said he put safety first.
"If you keep resetting the thing, it can cause a surge and light the whole building on fire," said Slaughter, 42, who has worked in apartment maintenance for 20 years. "I did not want to be the one responsible for burning the building down."
After Slaughter refused to reset the system, his supervisor performed the task, he and Baird said.
The electrical system to Building 34 is easy to reset. There's a lever outside of the electrical box that switches off when the circuits overload. Once the wiring has cooled, all workers had to do was switch the lever on, off and on again to energize the system.
But when Slaughter went to reset the system Saturday, he smelled what he thought was burning rubber coming from the electrical box. He could hear the wires sizzling.
Those are signs there's something seriously wrong, Himes said.
"Burning electrical odors are obviously a dangerous situation," Himes said. "His priority of safety was a wise choice, especially due to burning odor."
The breaker stops circuits from overloading, which may produce sparks that could lead to an electrical fire. Every time the breaker is activated, Oldsmar director of community development Greg Scoville said the breaker wears down.
"If you have a constant throwing of the breaker, over time, that can wear the breaker out," Scoville said.
If the breaker wears out, there's nothing to stop the circuits from overheating and starting a fire, Scoville said.
Baird did not agree that the situation was dangerous. She said she's even reset electrical systems before. The decision to reset the power was simply the only option the complex had, given the time and nature of the outage.
Electricians examined the problem both Saturday and Monday. Repairs were made Tuesday.
"This was the best we could do with the situation," Baird said. "Unfortunately it was on a weekend and involved a technician that wasn't as customer service-oriented as we would have liked."
The weekend's outages are not the only electrical issues the apartment complex is facing.
In May, Oldsmar fire inspector Aaron Gonzalez found more than 100 individual electrical violations at Spinnaker Bay. Among them: electrical boxes had exposed wiring, covers to electrical systems were either missing or needing repair, and electrical panels were in disrepair.
The needed repairs were made at Building 34 when Gonzalez went back to Spinnaker Bay in August, according to city records. Overall, the complex had completed roughly two-thirds of the required improvements.
Baird said those problems didn't contribute to the outages.
"We have a list and we're making progress on that list," Baird said. "I'd say we're 99 percent of the way there."
Meanwhile, residents don't know who and what to believe. LaTonya Stephens, 33, said she still doesn't understand what's going on.
Stephens said no one, including Slaughter, answered any of her questions until Monday, two days after the power first went out.
"I would have felt better if someone just told us that they understand there was a problem, that they were working on this," said Stephens, who has lived at Spinnaker Bay for six years. "I was just concerned that we were safe."
