PERRYVILLE – Citizens Electric Corporation (CEC) experienced an outage lasting nearly three hours Monday morning affecting over 1,700 members in Perryville.
One of the members affected was Donze Communications’ radio station KSGM transmitter near Brewer.
Employees of Citizens Electric witnessed loud noises and bright flashes in the St. Joe substation around 7A.M., just before the outage occurred. Operations crews and the engineering team are still working to officially confirm the cause of the outage.
However, a Starling and a sky lantern were found near the scene causing suspicion that either the bird or the sky lantern could have caused the equipment damage and outages.
A sky lantern or Chinese lantern, is a small hot air balloon made of paper, with an opening at the bottom where a small fire is suspended.
Damage to the substation was extensive enough to require a complete substation outage to replace a set of high voltage switches, conductor and to electrically test and re-fuse the substation transformer.
To Report an Outage
Outages can be tracked on the CEC mobile app and by visiting the website at cecmo.com. Safety concerns and outages can be reported 24/7 by calling 1-877-876-3511
The public is reminded to never touch, move, or drive over downed power lines when clearing debris from yards, roads, driveways, and other areas.
More about Citizens Electric Corporation
Citizens Electric Corporation, established in 1947, is a not-for-profit corporation operating as an electric cooperative located in Perryville, Missouri. Citizens Electric services over 27,500 members in the areas of Perry County, Ste. Genevieve County and portions of Cape Girardeau, Bollinger, Jefferson, and St. Francois County. For more information, visit www.cecmo.com or follow Citizens Electric on Facebook and YouTube.