Cookeville Electric Has Teams On-Call Ready For Outages From High Winds

High wind speeds Friday bringing winds up to 40 miles per hour with gusts up to 60 miles per hour have Cookeville Electric Department crews preparing to resolve outages.

Director Carl Haney said Cookeville Electric Department always has one crew on-call, ready to answer phones or go out to address issues when necessary.  Haney said the number one cause of outages in all weather comes from fallen tree branches on power lines.

“Our biggest preparation is all year long in tree-trimming,” Haney said. “The biggest thing we see with downed lines are tree limbs falling or trees themselves falling. So all-year long we keep crews that are trimming out all of our lines.”

Haney said they have actually upped their tree-trimming efforts over the past few years. He said those efforts have been met with positive results with fewer fallen limbs causing outages.

Haney said the general public can do their part in tree-trimming to help the department throughout the year. He said it also helps to report downed lines if they are spotted, and to stay away from the lines until the electric department addresses them.