
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 17, 1995                   TAG: 9506200054
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BRIEF OUTAGE STRIKES SALEM, ROANOKE

A short power outage Friday night knocked out lights in Roanoke and Salem and had police and firefighters scrambling after false burglar and fire alarms sounded.

The outage occured just before 10 p.m. Roanoke police Sgt. E.M. Legg said a field supervisor reported seeing what he thought was a transformer blowing.

"It boomed pretty loud," Legg said.

Power was out briefly all over the city and into Salem, where police reported lights on Main Street being out for about 3 minutes. In Roanoke, the outage set off burglar and fire alarms at businesses, churches and homes all over town.

Tom Jobes, assistant division manager for Appalachian Power Co., said the outage was so brief it didn't even register on the company's equipment.

At 11 p.m., workers had determined that one piece of equipment in Apco's Campbell Avenue station was not working, but they didn't know the cause. Jobes speculated that an animal might have gotten into it, causing it to shut down. The outage resulted from the system reconfiguring itself to keep the power on in the area served by the downtown station.

"The whole system is all tied together," Jobes said. "As far as we can tell, this was just our equipment taking care of itself and functioning like it's supposed to."

Because of the power outage, the Roanoke Times & World-News telephone system was out of order. The system was being repaired, but as of early this morning, it was not working.

by CNB