Thursday, May 21, 1998
Power outage sends Mohawk students home
By Cathy Willoughby
Staff Writer
Mohawk High School students were treated to a beautiful spring day, with no classes, after a power failure forced school officials to cancel classes Wednesday.
Principal Jim Kanable said the power outage occurred about 7:45 a.m., with a large number of students already in the school building. The students were told to report to classrooms until the source of the problem could be located.
Kanable said after hearing from North Central Electric Power that a substation in Sycamore was to blame, and that it could be a substantial amount of time before power would be restored, the students were sent home.
Due to the mild winter, the district still has three catastrophe days available. ''We called the radio stations first so that they could contact the parents, and we told the students that were leaving on their own that they should call their parents when they get home.
''We are concerned in this season of accidents that the children are driving safely. We are always concerned about releasing the students without their parent's knowledge,'' Kanable said.
Marcus Bryant, general manager of North Central Electric Cooperative, said the outage was a result of either one or two failed regulators. ''That caused two of the high voltage fuses to blow out which caused the loss of power. This happens very infrequently. It is very unusual for a regulator to go out.''
Power was restored to the school by 9:15 a.m. Bryant said it is a difficult problem to track down the exact cause of an outage and respond to it. The problem was corrected in one hour and 20 minutes, according to Bryant, by bypassing the regulators to cause the return of power.
He said regulators are used on the lines to boost the power during peak times, which in this area are doing harvest for grain drying and during the winter.