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For those who don't live on the west side of Orcas, on Friday, November 17th, a tall tree, well away from the transmission line, was blown into the line and knocked the power out to most of Orcas Island for over four hours. In the seven years I have been manager this is only the second outage that I have worked on first hand. A combination of events left Orcas Island's line crew shorthanded so Bill Culliton and I filled in. I was impressed by the efficiency of the OPALCO line crew. Of course, I wouldn't be as forthcoming if I didn't feel they did a good job, but watching this crew impressed me with how little lost motion there was. Everyone knew what had to be done and it all got done with a minimum of wasted effort and standing around. As an OPALCO member I think that we can all feel good over the quality of our linemen (and all our other employees, for that matter). In this particular outage and other outages, our Sheriff's Department pitched right in and helped with traffic control so that our people could get their job done as fast as they can. In a related vein, I was very surprised to find that some people continue to believe that our overhead power lines use insulated wires. This is not the case. Our overhead power lines use uninsulated wire and the necessary insulation is provided by glass insulators at each pole. In unusual cases these wires can be on the ground, yet still be energized. Don't assume a line on the ground is dead and don't try to move it out of the way. Give us a call and we will get someone out there to take care of it. What might look like a dead power line to you may be energized and could cause an electrocution. Treat all downed power lines as if they were energized and keep people away from them until our crews arrive. Let's have a safe winter and hope that Mother Nature doesn't need to take any more revenge on my statements. All of this rain has made the ground so soft that it will not take very much wind at all before we have a major problem on our hands.
Doug Bechtel
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