Outage leaves parts of Cortex in dark

Outage leaves parts of Cortex in dark

May 10, 2001

Journal Staff Report

Parts of Cortez were in the dark for about a half-hour Saturday night after a power outage struck.

The outage occurred Saturday night around 11 p.m. and left approximately 1,500 residents east of Mildred Road and those north to County Road P without electricity. The Tri-State Lost Canyon substation on Summit Ridge, which feeds power to a large part of Cortez, had an equipment failure which caused a transmission line to stop sending power to the affected areas.

Empire Electric worked quickly to isolate the problem and re-route power from the Blue Door substation, south of Cortez. By 11:30 p.m, power had been restored to all residents.

Empire Electric operations manager Scott Ehmke calls the kind of equipment failure that happened Saturday night a rarity.

"It’s pretty rare to have that type of equipment fail," said Ehmke. "We have a real good record with Tri-State."