–by Lin McNulty, Managing Editor —
We usually know when OPALCO is planning a power outage, and we normally get plenty of advance notice. The first notification usually comes in the form of widely-visible alerts to local media. Last night, however, many received a recorded phone message from OPALCO as the first and only advisory.
Yesterday afternoon, OPALCO’s crew was prepared to help Nickel Bros with the transport of a house arriving from the Bellevue area to Orcas.
In getting ready for that event, at about 3:40 p.m., the crew found a broken switch on the overheard transmission line, which made it unsafe to operate that switch as planned. In order to safely facilitate the house move, the crew made a decision to take an outage. The first outage, scheduled from 10-11pm (in actuality, it lasted from 10:18 – 10:48pm), allowed the transmission line to be de-energized as the house moved under the line.
Once the house move was scheduled to be complete, the crew took a second outage from approximately 3-6 a.m. to repair the broken transmission switch so that the line could be safely closed in (energized).
Just wondering why such a large and arguably unsightly creature such as this need be moved here in the first place. What are the economics of such a intrusive process? Better to build locally with the great abundance of recently deceased Doug fir and Hemlock.
What lives in Bellevue should remain in Bellevue.
Recycling is more responsible that tearing down & building with new manufactured products. Think of all the trees, tile, sheetrock, plastic, steel, that didn’t have to be cut down/manufactured by re using this existing structure, good job!
Good point, Uzek
Joe- I too am a “large and arguably unsightly creature” that used to live in Bellevue. I’m sure you’re more welcoming and inclusive than your comments above appear to sound.