NEELYVILLE — A tree in a power line knocked out the electric early Thursday morning to nearly 400 customers in the Neelyville area, including the school district.
“We didn’t have any (power) for a little while,” said Neelyville Superintendent Debra Parish. “I live here in town, it was before 7 o’clock that it flickered off and on several times and then just completely went off.”
When Parish arrived at school a short time later, she said, she met with the cooks, who were preparing breakfast and were going to use the gas oven to finish.
Breakfast, she said, was served as normal.
“We called Ozark Border; they indicated they had just started receiving calls and would be sending a crew to check into the situation.”
At about 7:45 a.m., Parish said, one of the teachers’ husbands, who is a crew leader for Ozark Border Electric Cooperative, contacted her and told her they had “found the pole that was the problem.
“They anticipated it would take about 30 minutes to repair. They were right to the minute almost.”
Parish said that information went out by radio and classroom teachers were contacted individually to “let each teacher know what the expectation was.
“It was almost to the minute. We appreciate them (Ozark Border) very much.”
Although the power was out for a time, “we all have flashlights in our emergency kits, and everyone has a cellphone with a flashlight on it,” Parish said. “We did just fine.”
The outage, according to Ozark Border General Manager David Schremp, effected 385 services and lasted for an hour and nine minutes.
The cause was a tree in a power line behind the Dollar General Store, Schremp said.
“The only reason the school was affected, the line the outage was on feeds the line that the school is on,” Schremp said.