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Utility and businesses see dark hours' effects

The electric cooperative examines what went wrong while stores and restaurants count their losses from a weekend power outage.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published November 29, 2005

Here's what happened on the day after a "catastrophic" power outage left in the dark 30,000 customers from Port Richey to north of Weeki Wachee and closed many of the stores and restaurants on the commercial-heavy corridor of U.S. 19 on the last day of one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year:

1. Senior staff members from the Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative met on Monday morning. The general manager told the folks in the engineering and operations departments to figure out exactly what went wrong and why, and to report back.

2. Work crews began going line by line and pole by pole checking to make sure everything is now in working order on U.S. 19 from the Bayonet Point intersection at State Road 52 up to the Weeki Wachee intersection at State Road 50. It's a process that likely will take the entire week.

3. Ernie Holzhauer did some explaining.

No excuses, he said.

Only an explanation.

"It is our responsibility, our responsibility, to keep the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; we didn't do that," Withlacoochee's manager of member relations said from his office at the company's Dade City headquarters. "But a set of events caused a catastrophic power failure.

"We will do whatever it takes," he added, "to ensure it doesn't happen again."

The "set of events" started late Thursday night. At 11:55 p.m., Holzhauer said, an insulator failed on a 110,000-volt transmission line near Hudson, leaving 30,000 customers without power, more or less, until 5 a.m. Friday.

The fix in that case required the company to go to a backup plan of sorts.

The Sunday failure, on a different section of line, near the intersection of U.S. 19 and SR 50 and unrelated to the first, according to Holzhauer, was too much for the backup plan to handle.

U.S. 19 went dark.

The same 30,000 customers were hit again, and this time it lasted longer.

Most of the area was without power from about 6 a.m. to about 3. p.m.

How businesses fared had a lot to do with whether they had at-the-ready generator power - that, or just dumb luck.

At County Line Cafe & Grill in Spring Hill, for example, power stayed on, owner Kevin Howe said - who knows how or why? - and he had air conditioning, hot cups of coffee and an estimated 10 percent to 15 percent boost in business.

"The line down the sidewalk was seven to eight people deep, from 8 to 12:30," Howe said Monday afternoon.

But other restaurants were not nearly so fortunate.

"We probably lost $2,000 to $3,000," said Sherry Campbell, assistant manager of the Village Inn in Spring Hill. "We lost the whole morning shift."

At the Cracked Egg in Spring Hill, it was 6:45 a.m., the first pot of coffee was ready, and half a pot of decaf - and everything shut down.

"Sunday's our busiest day of the week, so we were hit pretty bad," owner Lynda Morra said. "It killed us."

The Cracked Egg closed about 9:30, and Morra went with her husband, Rick, to the Burger King on Mariner Boulevard, far enough from U.S. 19 to still have power. They went through the drive-through and got croissant sandwiches with ham.

And they saw regulars of theirs along the way, waiting in line at places like the Breakfast Club at Seven Hills and Anna Bananas on Spring Hill Drive.

"Sunday's usually a busy day, but we were even busier," Breakfast Club co-owner Joe Mamo said. "The line was about 20 feet longer than it normally is."

"For five hours straight, we had at least 20 people out the door," Anna Bananas assistant manager Tony Aguiar said. "That's happened before, but not for five hours straight."

Meanwhile, back on U.S. 19 in Spring Hill, Target stayed open, and so did Lowe's and Home Depot.

At Target, generator power made the lights dimmer. Other than that, though, it was business as usual.

"We still had a pretty decent day," store team leader Tony Roman said Monday. "It was still shoppable."

At Home Depot, employees couldn't use the carpet-cutting machine or the lumber saw, but the cash registers were working just fine, according to store manager Kim Lassiter.

"Business was good," she said.

The noteworthy big-box exception was the Wal-Mart Supercenter at the entrance to Hernando Beach.

It closed, and stayed that way for not quite five hours, said Kathy Scanland, the store manager.

"Close to Christmas," she said, "none of us want to be closed.

"But we just directed them to the store on (SR) 50. They probably got some of my business. But that's okay, as long as people still shopped at Wal-Mart."

--Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified November 29, 2005, 02:15:28]