Power outages hit Boulder City

Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001 | 10:14 a.m.

The outages began about 8 p.m. and affected the entire city of 15,000 some 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas, said Sue Burkholder, a support services supervisor with the Police Department.

"We counted about 15 power outages and surges," Burkholder said. "It only went out once where we had our generator kick on, and that was maybe a three-minute outage." Power was completely restored by 10 p.m.

The outages occurred when rain caused an aging circuit insulator on a 69,000-volt transmission system to fail, said Ned Schamo, electrical superintendent with the Boulder City Municipal Electric Utility, which serves 7,500 residential and business customers.

The outages lasted less than one second each and occurred about five minutes apart, Schamo said. He said the insulator would be replaced Tuesday in a routine repair.

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