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Power Companies Prepare for Fay
08/22/08 - 08:34 PM
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Jessi Chapin - bio

click for larger image Bay County, Fla:

With wind and rain come power outages, and across the state about 43 thousand reported by Progress Energy lost power Friday, as Tropical Storm Fay made its way across Florida.  As the storm approaches Bay County, Gulf Power Company spokesperson Jeff Rodgers says they’re prepared.

“We’ve got teams that have been meeting non-stop in the last couple days reviewing,” he said, “to make sure that everything moves like it should quickly and smoothly as we restore the power.”

Gulf Power has also recruited almost 200 extra workers from companies in Georgia, but Rodgers says he doesn’t think they’ll have to use all of their resources.

“We’re expecting scattered outages and we’re expecting to have it back up real quickly,” he said, but he remembers lasting impacts from previous storms.

“We’ve learned a lot of lessons from the hurricanes we’ve been through in the panhandle,” said Rodgers, “Everyone’s got assignments, we’ve got teams, everyone’s on standby they know what they have to do and we work as hard as we can to get the power back on to our customers.

While power companies are prepared, they say there are things everyone needs to do to protect themselves during a storm:

- If rising water affects your home or you decide to leave, turn off power at the source or circuit breakers.
- If you plan to replace a fuse, never do so near wet surfaces like a soaked carpet.
- Stay away from downed power lines.
- After the storm, check your entire property for downed lines or damage.

“just because you don’t see a power line doesn’t mean it can’t affect you for example if you have a chain link fence it could be laying on the back part of your fence and energizing the entire fence to the front,” said Rodgers.

He says while they can’t predict the storm damage, they’ll do all they can to clean up.

“There’s nothing better than getting things back the way they were,” he said, “and getting that power back on is a way to get back to normalcy.”

Power experts suggest waiting for at least an hour to call your power company in the event of an outage to report it, in case crews are already on scene.

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