published: Friday, February 05, 2010

Remember When

Ann Dupee

Correspondent

December 28, 1989

The Chain of Lakes gave off an eerie mist Saturday, Dec. 23rd as temperatures dipped to 27 degrees. The cold air meeting the warmth of the lakes made driving hazardous on parts of Lake Shore Drive.

Snowflakes were falling on the back patio when my dinner guests arrived about 5:30 p.m., however it did not stick as it did in Gainesville and Jacksonville. Snow in the northern part of the state closed portions of Interstates 75, 10 and 95.

The official weather station at Lake Louisa State Park registered a low of 19 degrees for Christmas Eve, however the thermometer at NCNB (Bank of America) registered 18 degrees at 8 a.m. The low Christmas night was 21 degrees. Temperatures began to warm Tuesday and a warming trend was predicted for the rest of the week.

The cold weather froze the fruit on the trees and Tuesday growers were beginning to pick all the fruit they could salvage and get it to juice processing plants. It will be several days or weeks before it is known how much tree damage there is, although many appear to still have their leaves, in contrast to the freeze in 1985 when thousands of trees were left bare. Some who planted after the freezes of 1883 and 1985 have been heard to say they will not plant again in Lake County.

Lake County Agricultural Center spokesman John Jackson reported that some citrus growers lost their crops because overhead irrigation jet sprays were turned off during power brownouts and froze in a matter of minutes, making it impossible to reactive them and keep the temperature of the fruit warm.

Power crews for both Florida Power and Sumter Electric literally worked around the clock. FP District Manager Paul Lewis said Christmas Eve day they had to rotate feeders for a while to help them through the capacity emergency. There were several occasions when feeders were brought back on, only to cause several transformers and older lines to go down. Work crews were immediately dispatched.

Some Clermont homes were without power for six or seven hours but everyone was back on Christmas Eve by 11 p.m. Brownouts ran on Christmas Eve for 30 minutes power on and 30 minutes power off. Christmas Day there was only one 15-minute turnoff at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday morning everyone with Florida Power service was back on.

Lewis said the most significant human-interest story was the crew and service people in the Clermont District. Darrell Reeves had only about six hours sleep during the whole ordeal. Many left little children at home Christmas morning to restore the power.

The local office was handicapped because the telephone line connecting Clermont to the Winter Garden answering service office, where calls are dispatched, was down. Lewis said he was in the Clermont office taking calls until 1 a.m. Christmas Eve. He found a bright spot though, when people who had called earlier to complain called back to thank the company for restoring the power and apologized for their earlier gruffness.

It made my Christmas Eve.

Florida Power brought in 17 line crews from St. Petersburg to help the Greater Orlando area, which Tuesday morning still had widespread outages. Bill Britt, a former Clermont District manager now managing the Orlando area, told Lewis they had received threatening calls in the Orlando area and an armed officer had been placed at the Orlando FP office.

Ted Williams, Manager of Sumter Electric Cooperative's Groveland office, also praised his employees, who were on call and standby. Williams said he only had two hours with his family Christmas Day.

Williams said the SCADA system in the main office in Sumterville recorded 17 degrees Sunday night. The Groveland substation's transformer was destroyed about midnight Saturday night. Transformer oil caught on fire when the transformer blew and crews worked from midnight Saturday up to 4 a.m. Tuesday. About 2,000 customers were affected. An overload in the Howey-in-the-Hills substation affected another 1,400 customers.

Tuesday at 8:45 a.m. everyone was back on line. A new transformer had been installed at the Howey station and a portable, mobile substation was in place at the Groveland station.

Williams said all SECO customers were super nice, even though the company was shutting the load during the weekend at Florida Power's request because their transformers were overloaded. SECO as its own generator plant in Palatka but runs its power through Florida Power transmission facilities.

"Normally when we have a critical situation we will purchase power from Georgia Power, but it was overloaded and had nothing to spare, which meant we had to start brownouts and shutting out lights periodically to keep from having more blowouts," said Williams.

Brownouts were at 18-minute intervals at a time, every 30 minutes. However, SECO only had one power line down due to all the heaters, Christmas lights, stoves, etc. "People were very good about shutting off everything they didn't need."

Orlando Utilities lost one of its plants due to the overload and Tampa Electric also had feeder problems, shutting people off for two hours at a time.

Williams' concern Tuesday morning was the effect of overloading due to the start of the business week. They were just beginning the process of trying to regroup and put everything back in order.

On a lighter note, the wildlife on Clermont's Center Lake survived the cold weather and the swans, ducks and geese were seen swimming in the lake early Tuesday morning.