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The National Weather Service (NWS) is putting a heavy emphasis on the potential for major flooding late this week through the weekend. NWS is forecasting rainfall totals ranging from 6 to 10 inches across southern Indiana and the northwestern portion of central Kentucky, which includes the Louisville Metro area.
Flash flooding can cause rivers and streams to rise swiftly, pushing water onto roadways. Six inches of moving water can knock an adult off their feet and cause vehicles to lose control and stall, and as little as 12 inches of moving floodwater can be enough to carry a vehicle away.
Here are some tips to stay safe and avoid flood dangers:
- Turn around, don’t drown! – Driving through flooded roadways can be deadly. Turn around if you come across a flooded path.
- Make a family emergency communication plan that includes pets.
- Assemble an emergency kit for home, work and the car.
- Stay informed: Tune in to local officials by radio, TV or social media.
- Sign up to receive emergency notifications via “LENSAlert.” It’s as simple as texting “LENSAlert” to 67283.
- Evacuate when advised by authorities or if you are in a flood-prone area. Get to higher ground.
- Check on your neighbors to make sure they’re OK.
- After a flood, avoid walking in floodwaters, disaster areas and heed road closure and cautionary signs. Stay away from electrical utility equipment and wait for the “all clear” before returning to a location impacted by flooding.
For more flood safety tips visit Ready.gov and Weather.gov.
From LG&E:
Safety:
We urge everyone to stay away from downed wires and to keep others and pets away too. People should always assume a downed wire is an energized line. We urge customers to report any downed wires immediately. If the situation is an emergency, they should call 911. In non-emergency situations they may call LG&E at 502-589-1444 (fast path 1-1-3). Customers should also remain cautious when clearing fallen tree limbs and debris from their yard and avoid contacting any branches or debris that may be in direct contact with a power line.
Restoration process:
During and after storms, LG&E’s service restoration takes place through a prioritization process that involves several different layers. While we work to restore all customers’ service in the field, we will also use our ability to reroute power, where we can, from our control center, coupled with automated controls installed on our system, to limit the number of customers affected. Procedure as follows:
- First, we respond to emergency situations, reports of downed wires and unsafe conditions.
- Next, we will begin restoration of critical services in our community - hospitals, fire and police stations, airports, and nursing homes.
- Then, we restore outage events with the highest number of customers, which will bring back service as safely and quickly as possible.
- Next, we repair any damaged equipment. Whenever possible, temporary repairs are made to restore power quickly and allow time for longer repairs to take place.
- For customers still without power, crews then make repairs to the individual power lines and service lines that feed directly to customers’ individual homes and businesses.
- LG&E will continue to update estimated restoration times based on crews’ feedback in the field and the level of damage our crews are finding at customers’ properties. Customers are encouraged to continue checking their status by visiting https://stormcenter.lge-ku.com/ or by utilizing our mobile APP.
Our crews and partners will be in the field safely working around the clock on all aspects of the restoration effort. They are protecting the public, assessing, and repairing damage and restoring power to the communities we are proud to serve.
In the beginning of a large-scale power outage, sometimes up to 24 hours or more depending on the severity of the storm, it may appear LG&E is not doing anything, but in actuality, our crews are out assessing damage to our system. We must first assess the totality of the outage before we begin to repair. Assessment may involve inspecting substations/equipment and include our employees walking/driving the transmission/distribution lines where an outage has occurred and physically finding the problem, trees/equipment, etc. As you can imagine, we have over 3,400 miles of overhead lines in Jefferson County, so this takes a good amount of time. |
