Hurricane Isaias was pretty much a pussy-cat when its outer bands reached Wake Forest Monday night into Tuesday morning, town officials say.
“Fortunately, Wake Forest sustained no major damage and no flooding,” Bill Crabtree, the town’s Communications and Public Affairs director, said in an email Wednesday.
“Crews picked up several large limbs Monday night and Tuesday morning that were blocking portions of Chalk Road, Ligon Mill Road and a few streets in the Margot’s Pond area. There was also one downed tree along North College Street. Otherwise, the town fared pretty well.
“In addition, Wake Forest Power had no power outages which is a testament to the great work our tree trimming crews do year-round. Downed trees and limbs are the leading cause of power outages during storms. Those crews work to minimize storm impacts year-round through preventive maintenance, including trimming of trees around Wake Forest’s 140 miles of overhead electric distribution lines.”
That’s a massive sigh of relief. It is only August, we are at the “I” letter for storm names, and we can expect several more storms which may threaten North Carolina.
Meanwhile, at Wake Electric, whose service area stretches over seven counties, from Durham through Granville, Vance, Franklin, Nash, Wake to Johnston, there were about 2,700 members out of power by 5 a.m.
As reported by Don Bowman, “Yes, we did have some power outages on Tuesday. The outages didn’t really start to ramp up until 3:30 a.m. and we had a high of about 2,700 members out at 5 a.m. yesterday.
“All in all, we were very lucky throughout this storm – no broken poles or transformer changeouts required. All members were on by 8 a.m. yesterday. As for locations, the largest outages occurred for us along the corridor of Zebulon Road, south of Wake Forest, and the corridor of 401, south of Louisburg.”
Wake Electric, like most rural cooperatives, famously overbuilds its transmission lines and rigorously clears the paths for those lines to prevent limbs or trees falling on the lines.
#
