Appalachian Power Company warned residents north of Hurricane that it planned to use a helicopter on Monday, November 29, to trim trees away from power lines on Hurricane Creek, Peach Ridge, Sleepy Creek, Trace Creek, Poindexter Creek, Foster Road, and Mill Hollow Road by telephone and by a legal notice in the November 25 Breeze.
The robot telephone caller stated that short power outages could possibly result.
The robot was right in that an outage occurred. Electric power went out some five miles north of Hurricane on Hurricane Creek Road shortly before 11:00 a.m. Residents in the Sleepy Creek area (one mile from Hurricane) lost power about two hours later.
The Sleepy Creek outage was the result of the helicopter’s whirling trimmer blade causing a tree to fall into power lines. Power remained out until shortly before 6:00 p.m. in both areas.
The helicopter rested from its wrongdoings at Caldwell’s Truck repair Monday night.