Crews with Columbus Light and Water spent most of Tuesday and this morning coping with three separate power issues that left traffic snarled, the Walmart and Kroger parking lots empty and customers in the dark.
Todd Gale, operations manager for Columbus Light and Water, said the trouble began Tuesday with an insulator wire issue around 7:30 a.m. near the intersection of Military Road and Highway 82.
Then, Tuesday afternoon, around 2, a thunderstorm caused a power pole to break at Highway 45 North and Wilkins-Wise Road, taking two additional power poles down as it fell. That outage affected numerous businesses, including Walmart and Kroger.
Gale said power was restored to the area around 10:15 p.m.
Will Simmons, meteorologist at WCBI, said a wind gust of 18 mph was recorded at the Golden Triangle Regional Airport at 1:55 p.m. Tuesday, but it”s possible there were higher gusts in the downtown area.
Kay Swartz, branch manager of Triangle Federal Credit Union on Highway 45 North, said around the same time, one of her tellers was walking inside when the wind became so strong she was unable to close the door behind her.
“The wind got real bad for just a minute,” Swartz said.
After that, the power went out. Swartz said they closed the credit union, but the employees stayed on duty, thinking power would be quickly restored.
“We just did busy work and whatever we could do,” Swartz said, adding that it was convenient that Triangle FCU opened its East Columbus branch in April, because at least customers were able to go there to complete their banking transactions.
Gale said Wednesday morning, a problem at the electrical substation on Military Road near Columbus Brick left more customers in the dark.
As of 9:45 a.m., power had been restored to all customers, but the issue is still under investigation.
Gale did not know how many customers were affected by the three outages.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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