A lingering electrical power failure at Statesboro High School that prompted the school to send students home early Friday and also cancel weekend events resulted from a problem with a circuit breaker system internal to the school, according to school system and Georgia Power officials.
However, the internal problem followed a series of much shorter-term line outages caused by gusty winds that affected several thousand of Georgia Power’s customers – most reportedly for about five minutes or less – in the Statesboro area Thursday night.
Statesboro High’s early Friday closing procedure included notifications to parents by phone, email and text messages, a 12:05 p.m. dismissal time for car riders and an early bus route, reported Hayley Greene, the Bulloch County Schools public relations director. Her original media alert cited “unforeseen power outages that will involve extensive maintenance and require power to be completely cut off at the school.”
An update just after 3:30 p.m. indicated the problem was still unresolved.
“It is unclear at this time what is causing the power to not restore properly at Statesboro High School,” Greene wrote. “Maintenance crews have been working steadily on the building's main breaker system to resolve the issue. Families, faculty, and staff are asked to monitor communications from the school district over the weekend about the status of the power restoration.”
Weekend events previously scheduled at the school, including the Friday, April 12, home soccer games and the Saturday, April 13, Walk at Womack and Miss Statesboro High School Pageant were cancelled. Greene said they will be rescheduled.
Georgia Power had a crew on the scene, but the problem during the day Friday was an internal one at the school, said the power company’s Statesboro area manager, Joel Hanner.
“They have an internal issue we’re helping them out with,” he said. “From what I understand, they have a breaker that went bad or is giving them some trouble, and so they’re having a time getting it back on or it just won’t turn on. So we’re engaged and out there to disengage the power so they can get it changed out.”
Hanner acknowledged that outages had occurred on some of Georgia Power’s lines in Bulloch County during the night but said none had been indicated as occurring at the school. He had heard of one tree falling on a major power line and other wind-related breaks, said but power was rerouted by switching so that service was restored after a very short time.
“We had a few large transmission lines where wind caused trees to brush them, or one of them, at least, fell, and it impacted large parts of town, but no more than probably two and to five minutes,” Hanner said after checking into the matter.
These included one brief outage along Fair Road, another in the Southeast Bulloch area and another around Oliver Road, momentarily affecting about 1,600, about 1,300 and about 1,900 customer locations each. These occurred around 1:20 a.m.
The three-day weather log feature available from the Statesboro-Bulloch County Airport through the National Weather Service website at www.weather.gov, showed winds gusting up to 31 mph during the night.