Sunday, September 15, 2013

Storm in Lake Worth

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In front of Kilwins at the Lake Worth beach & casino watching the storm

The thunder was deafening and one bolt of lightning hit close on the sidewalk. The bolts were thick and menacing. Streets are flooded. Power is out in many areas of the city. Even the Lake Worth web site is down.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

we can't even get a hold of anybody in utilities. when you dial it it just hangs up. just called the sheriff's office and they said possibly before midnight. she said they were getting a ton of calls

Lynn Anderson said...

FPL has an excellent site on power outages:
http://www.fplmaps.com/

Anonymous said...

this must have hit the grid

Anonymous said...

LWU can't even leave a pre-recorded message for its customers

Anonymous said...

My family has filed paperwork over two years ago that was supposed to put us on some magical list of homes with special needs patients who would be powered back up before a two hour mark. I called at 6:52 and the line wasn't even operational at that time. I am beyond pissed off at this point because they keep you on hold for exactly 30 minutes then disconnect. This is why we have been calling them Lake Worth Futilities for at least 20 years, and this is exactly why we do!

Anonymous said...

I drove through the city around 7:30 p.m. and saw that 9th Avenue North and up had power. Everybody south of 9th Avenue North was dark. All of downtown was dark, all the street lights out.

Secondhand info: Somebody told me he saw lightning hit a transformer. He said he could smell the smell of fried wires in the air.

Anonymous said...

Lights were on at City Hall this evening and the lot was filled with cars!! Its a shame someone could not get word to the residents to let us know how long we can expect the electricity to be out. 4 hours? 6? 2 days? We're going to run out of candles here!!!

Lynn Anderson said...

The most frustrating thing when the power goes out is when there is no message telling us when the power will be restored or what caused the outage. The web site is still down as I write this.

Lynn Anderson said...

Called Utilities and Mike said because of the storm, a line came down...he was uncertain of the location. Everyone is up and running now.

Lynn Anderson said...

anony at 11:46. Thanks to Susan Stanton who had a huge generator installed at City Hall, the lights should always be on there and business is not interrupted.

Anonymous said...

Just finished reading yours and other comments about the outages experienced from the weather event last evening. Storms are something that can't be avoided, yet how a utility responds to these situations is a good indicator of the utilities competency level. LW is an abject failure at all levels in their handling of these weather events, one just needs to refer to the hurricane debacle to judge the levels of incompetency.

The utility industry has had in place a OMS (outage management system) for well in excess of 25 years. Why haven't they purchased any system to keep customers informed on the status of outages. This is just another indication of the failure of the employees to keep current with current industry practices.

I could go on for a long time just on this subject, won't do any good. The number one piece of information customers want during outages, is what time, how long of duration going to be.

You need to ask the CM and Clay why LW doesn't have a competent OMS system in place, unacceptable. This is a subject that requires a competent response, not just something to make you go away. Again look at FPL on how a competent utility responds to situations. Sell the utility, if possible.

Anonymous said...

Right. All that was needed was a recorded message that people could listen to when calling the city saying how long they could expect the power to be out. This does not seem like such an enormously difficult thing to arrange.

Laurence McNamara said...

In years past there was a number to call, something like 1-800-lights-o but I forget it. Does anyone know it and does it still function?
The thunder and especially the lightning were severe and prolonged.
After it had subsided the our power was back on in an hour, at about 10 PM.
Does anyone think it would have been a good idea to send a lineman up to work on the power during the lightning strikes?
Since Mr. Lindstrom, an electrical engineer has taken over the electric side of the utility, our reliability is greatly improved over the past years when a squirrel or lizard could knock us out for hours.