Storm, winds cause outages

By Sam Waller

The downtown area and a large section of Albany was left without power for several hours early on Oct. 27 because of a thunderstorm that downed a tree.

“All of downtown from the courthouse and the southwest part of town was out from about midnight until about 5:00 a.m.,” Albany police chief Mike House said.

Some blocks were off several more hours.

House said most of the damage was caused by a tree being blown over and falling on power lines.

“Right behind city hall, a transformer caught fire because of the power lines and blew two transformers,” he said. “It took most of the night to repair.”

Some of the original repairs had to be performed a second time on Thursday because of high winds, House said.

“We had another tree fall and hit those same power lines,” he said. “It caused a small outage for awhile at the same time we had grass fires going on.”

House said most of the rest of the damage consisted of downed limbs and that he was not aware of structural damage to any buildings.