Power “Blink” Causes Communications Problems in Franklin Co.

A brief power outage that ripped through Lavonia and Franklin County Tuesday morning caused some minor communications issues and knocked 92.1 off the air for a time.

According to Hart EMC spokesman Keith Brown, the outage was caused by what is known as a “blink” in the power transmission.

“The transmission lines which serve the substations and which ultimately serve the end user had a power blink,” Brown explained. “We were notified by our transmission service provider that they did have a blink.” 

Brown said those blinks can be caused for any number of reasons.

“It could be a variety of things, from a tree rubbing on a line, a squirrel, a piece of equipment,” he said. “Under the federal guidelines, we have to investigate those and determine what and why and make a full report and that process has started.”
Even though power was quickly restored after that power blink, WLHR Radio remained off the air for a time.

And emergency dispatch services in Franklin County were also affected, but only for several minutes.

No major damage was reported by the brief outage.