A Black Friday blackout
More than 3,000 Florida Power and Light customers, including all of Boca Grande, were without power for several hours early Friday morning after damage was done to a conductor.
The most significant impact on Boca Grande? A dire lack of coffee.
According to an FPL spokesman the outage was reported at 6:30 a.m. There were, however, sporadic outages for hours prior to that time.
Police and fire personnel in the vicinity of the Anchor Inn blocked off roads while crews worked on the problem.
Lt. Mike D’Angelo at the Boca Grande Fire Department said that two power lines had been rubbing together and arcing for quite some time until the conductor went out completely.
“We were woken up by it,” he said. “It sounded like an arc welder. We looked out the back door and saw it, and responded accordingly. We were actually there when Lee County dispatch got the first 911 call.”
Island firefighters arrived on the scene at 6:37 a.m. The department was dispatched by Lee County four minutes later.
By 7 a.m., many islanders could be found out and about in search of coffee. At the Boca Grande Baking Company the line was long and the shop was dark, but customers weren’t leaving empty-handed. Pastries, juice, even coffee could be found in the hands of those who left the store.
“We were making coffee on the stove, boiling water and taking the coffee filter basket and ladling hot water over the coffee,” she said. “It actually worked well, it was awesome. It was out for at least two and a half hours, on one of our busiest days of the year. Of course because it’s cold out, lots of people wanted hot coffee, and we were trying to keep up but could only give out small ones. The whole thing was kind of comical.”
When Hudson’s opened people in search of precious java immediately swamped the store. After learning their lesson from several hurricanes, store management purchased a large generator for back-up. They had customers lined up 12-deep at the register.
According to the FPL representative, most of the island’s power was restored by 9:46 a.m., and the conductor was fixed by 11:20 a.m.
Island resident Len Tatko, who lives next to the power pole, said he was startled by the light show.
“We woke up because it looked like someone set off a camera flash in our bedroom,” he said. “I jumped out of bed and saw it was a little after 6 a.m. I went down and saw the lines dancing because of the wind blowing. The light was blinding, and then there were flames everywhere. The firemen told us to get away from the wires, because if they shorted again they could conceivably break and go flying. It was an exciting morning.”
