County hit with mysterious outage

County hit with mysterious outage

Nearly 10,000 in area lost power

By PETER GUINTA and CHAD SMITH
The St. Augustine Record
Publication Date: 12/10/08


A power transmission problem left nearly 10,000 Florida Power & Light customers across St. Johns County without power for a few minutes Tuesday evening.

Sarah Marmion, an FPL spokeswoman, said the outages were caused by an equipment failure at a power substation in St. Augustine. The outages started at 5:18 p.m., and it took about 20 minutes to get every affected customer's power restored.

"We were able to reroute the power and circumvent the problem," Marmion said.

The problem came at some point in the process in which power is transferred from a power plant to the local substation via transmission lines, explained Rusty Russillo, a St. Augustine-based spokesman for FPL.

However, it wasn't clear exactly what the problem was that caused it, Russillo said. Power for most came back on in five to 10 minutes -- reports vary according to geography -- before it disappeared again for another 30 seconds or so.

Susan Parks, owner of Anastasia Books, across from St. Augustine City Hall, said she had no customers in the store when the lights went out.

"When it looked like the power was going to be out a while, I packed up and went home," Parks said.

She runs the used book store with her husband, award-winning writer Stetson Kennedy, who is now working on a memoir.

Dorecha Smith, director of after school programs for American Legion Post 194 on Pearl Street, said some of the kids in that program were outside on the playground and others inside with their musical instruments when the lights died.

"Some of the kids yelled when it suddenly got dark," Smith said about a half hour later. "But there was no harm done and everything's back to normal now."

Mark and Lorraine Stinson said they were home on St, Augustine Beach when the power died.

"We were just sitting down to watch the news," Mark Stinson said. "Then we were looking for matches and candles."


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