Falling tree leaves city without power for six hours

The storm system that moved through Tuesday didn’t cause the severe weather meteorologists feared in St. Mary Parish. But the wind was strong enough to push a tree onto a key component of the Morgan City electricity distribution system, leaving the city without power for more than six hours.
The same weather system spawned a tornado that touched down in Arabi and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans on Tuesday evening, killing one person and causing widespread power outages.
In Morgan City, electricity went down at 11:35 a.m. Tuesday at the Review office. It was restored about 6 p.m.
The outage began when the wind blew a tree onto power lines in the area between Oceaneering and the Morgan City sewage treatment plant, Utility Director Bill Cefalu said Wednesday.
At the time the outage began, the gauge at Harry P. Williams Memorial Airport near Patterson was reporting sustained wind of 28 mph with gusts of 35 mph.
The key affected 138,000-volt line brings in Cleco power for distribution to substations around the city, Cefalu said. The line is carried on 150-foot poles, and the tree’s impact was hard enough to cause a fault atop one of the poles.
Equipment capable of reaching the top of the 150-foot pole had to be brought in, and when it was in place, heavy rain began, Cefalu said. But crews worked through it and were able to restore power.
Under other circumstances, Cefalu said, the city’s own power plant would have been able to generate electricity if power from Cleco or Entergy was unavailable. But because this particular line was affected, that option wasn’t available.
“We would have been generating power into the fault,” Cefalu said.
He said he has received permission from the H&B Young Foundation, which owns the property in the area where the tree fell, to trim or remove trees and prevent a recurrence.
The city spends about $100,000 a year to re-move limbs that threaten power lines, Cefalu said.
St. Mary Parish K-12 students returned to school Wednesday morning after taking the day off from classes Tuesday. The district called off classes Tuesday because weather forecasts included possible flash flooding, hail and tornadoes.
No public school facilities reported damage Tuesday, Superintendent Dr. Teresa Bagwell said Wednesday morning.
Ochsner St. Mary was on generator power during the outage, hospital CEO Fernis LeBlanc said in an emailed statement.
“A small number of nonemergent surgeries were rescheduled due to the outage affecting one of the hospital’s chillers, but other systems and procedures were unaffected,” LeBlanc said Wednesday. “The power has since been fully restored and Ochsner St. Mary is fully functional and remains ready to take care of Morgan City residents.
“Across the system, Ochsner Health is always prepared for a number of scenarios, including power outages, and has robust redundancies and preparations in place for these and other events.”
Elsewhere, 10 tornadoes were reported in Texas on Monday.
The fatality in the New Orleans-area Tuesday occurred in the Arabi area of St. Bernard Parish, where roofs were ripped from homes, utility poles were toppled and thousands were left without power, The Advocate reported.
About 15,000 Cleco and Entergy customers lost power after the tornado struck, the newspaper said.