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Power Outages In County Were Fickle, Scattered, Brief

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By DAVID SOMMER and LISA A. DAVIS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 27, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - The West Pasco Government Center was apparently the epicenter of a smattering of local power outages Tuesday afternoon.

The pattern was fickle: Pasco High School in Dade City lost power, but the lights stayed on at nearby Pasco Regional Medical Center.

An emergency shutdown at Florida Power and Light's Turkey Point nuclear reactor near Miami was blamed for triggering scattered outages statewide.

At the Emergency Operations Center on Citizens Drive in New Port Richey, staff member opened the blinds and switched on the backup generator so they could keep monitoring a squall line approaching from the Gulf of Mexico, spokesman Eric Keaton said.

"The power was out from 1:15 until 1:45, so a lot of people just went to lunch," he said.

Keaton said most of the River Ridge community was out, and Pasco sheriff's deputies had to direct traffic at lights along Little Road from the government center north past Ridge Road.

No major traffic accidents were reported, said sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin.

However, the Florida Highway Patrol was investigating a fender bender after a county-owned vehicle collided with a parked sheriff's cruiser while the deputy directed traffic at Ridge and Little roads. No injuries were reported, Tobin said.

The Sheriff's Office West Operations Center, where many deputies write reports and several detectives are based, also lost power for about an hour because there are no generators at the location, Tobin said.

"We try to work around it," he said. "A majority of our deputies have computers in their car."

At the nearby courthouse, judges called for human court reporters to take transcripts of trials after the relatively new electronic recording system was knocked out. Emergency generators kept lights on, and some people even chanced the elevators.

Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point lost electricity for a few minutes but no patients were affected, spokesman Kurt Conover said.

"The operating rooms and those kinds of things are on backup batteries as well as generators," he said.

No outages were reported at the other four hospitals in Pasco: Community Hospital and Morton Plant North Bay Hospital in New Port Richey; Florida Hospital Zephyrhills; and Pasco Regional Medical Center. All have backup power sources.

Police dispatchers in Dade City and Zephyrhills said only a handful of people called to report brief outages.

Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative, which serves areas in Citrus, Hernando and Pasco counties, reported 19,000 customers were without power for about 30 minutes early Tuesday afternoon, spokesman David Lambert said

Three schools - Sunray Elementary in Holiday, Locke Elementary in Elfers and Pasco High - experienced power outages, the Pasco County School District reported.

The outages at the two elementary schools lasted about 20 minutes each, said Summer Romagnoli, a spokeswoman for the district.

Pasco High lost power at 2:03 p.m., eight minutes after the school day ended, and was still out at least 30 minutes later, she said.

Power to Sunray and Locke is supplied by Progress Energy. Pasco High gets its electricity from Tampa Electric Co.

The district canceled all school activities scheduled for Tuesday evening, citing concerns about impending severe weather and the loss of power in surrounding counties.

Reporter Ronnie Blair contributed to this report. Reporter David Sommer can be reached at

dsommer@tampatrib.com or (727) 815-1087.

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