In the dark

Sunday, November 27, 2005

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Click here for a larger image of the area affected by the outage.

For the second time in just days, tens of thousands of residents living along U.S. 19 in Pasco and Hernando counties lost power for hours on Sunday.

Residents and businesses along U.S. 19 in Hernando County and in parts of Pasco County woke up Sunday morning with no electricity.

More than 30,000 homes and businesses were in the dark. Power went out in the same area late Thursday night into Friday.

In a statement, Ernie Holzhauer of Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative explained what happened.

"At 5:55 this morning power was interrupted to more than 30,000 members who live along the U.S. 19 corridor from Port Richey to just north of Weeki Wachee," Holzhauer said. "The interruption was caused by a failed Progress Energy transmission line."

Jennifer Socha, the guest service manager at the Best Western in Weeki Wachee, said power problems are leading to problems with guests.

Some are starting to complain.

"For as long as I've lived here the power outages haven't been this frequent in such a short amount of time," Socha said. "And the past couple of days it has just been really rough that the power has been going out as often as it has."

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