Around the 3:20pm yesterday, the second round of a severe storm system delivered what it promised – heavy rain, and damaging gust winds, resulting in fallen trees, downed power lines and open wires on roadways. Then the lights went out in Cathage. No electricity meaning no internet, land lines, and no traffic lights. At one point there was a complete blackout in the entire city according to Mayor Vivians and City Hall. Police Chief Clay asked everyone in the City to please stay home. Over 4,000 people in the community were without power until partial restoration started around 11:30pm. All power is expected to be restored today.
A possible contributing factor to the outage was major transformer damage on Highway 16 west.
Additional transformers were broken off of poles in the city including the one impaled in a trailer. No injuries were reported.. See photo
