At one point on the evening of July 30, more than half of LUB’s customers were without power

TOP PHOTO: LUB crew members, Donnie Day (left) and Tim Carroll, assess a large tree that is into another large tree all the while pulling an LUB cable down with it.

LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF)- A severe thunderstorm left hundreds of downed trees along with snapped power poles and downed lines in its wake last Tuesday evening. At one juncture, more than 13,000 of La Follette Utilities Board’s 22,954 customers were without power.

This is one of the many downed tree calls that continue coming in to LUB that were found after last week’s storm. Crews were notified about this situation at 8am Monday. One of the crew members with the tree cutting company estimated it would finish clearing the tree by late afternoon.

“Almost all of our customers had power restored by the weekend from last week’s storms. We are continuing the clean up process. We are making repairs and trying to return the system back to normal,” said LUB General Manager Regina Kennedy.

Left to right are LUB’s Robert Fritts, Donnie Day and Tim Carroll early Monday afternoon as they arrived to handle this project. Day went over to the nearby home down the hill to notify them that they would be without power for a couple of hours.

LUB still has a few customers out who need to make repairs before they can be reconnected, according to Kennedy.

Tim Carroll is going up in the bucket to disconnect a cable.

“I’d like to thank all operations employees, including many water department employees who helped electric crews. Also thanks to employees who answered phone calls and those who organized crews and worked the mapping system,” said Kennedy.

The disconnect is made by Tim Carroll so the tree crew can go to work.

The peak of last Tuesday evening’s outage was just before 6:30pm. By 6:30am the next day, only a few hundred customers were without power as crews worked through the night. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 08/06/2024-6AM)

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