Thanks to a hidden strike by Mother Nature, students at Oxford High School didn’t have to wait for December or January to enjoy a few days away from classes.
Instead, a lightening strike helped to shut down power to the high school building and closed classes on both Wednesday and Thursday of this past week, and for half a day on Monday.
“DTE said (the lightening strike) could have happened as much as a week ago,” said Superintendent Virginia Brennan-Kyro.
The power outage was discovered late Tuesday night by custodians. Brennan-Kyro said that DTE was called and crews found “peppering,” or small holes, throughout the power line.
“Those holes eventually burned out the line,” she explained. “The bad news is that the damage is more extensive than they initially thought and repairs will probably take longer.”
Due to additional storms that had moved through the Detroit area earlier in the week, DTE was short on trucks and crews, so the company recommended independent contractor Centerline Electric to do the work.
In the mean time, district administration decided to have the contractor bring in a generator. Brennan-Kyro said the high school couldn’t afford to use all of it’s spare days before the bad weather even arrives.
“It’s a bright, sunny day out and we’re having to use our extra days,” she stated, “we needed to get the school back on line.”
Assistant Superintendent Ron Franey confirmed that a generator was brought in at 2 p.m. on Thursday and that power had been restored shortly after 5 p.m., just in time for the evening girls’ basketball games.
“Everything is up and running again,” he stated.
However, things did not stay that way. On Monday, the generator began having difficulties around 5:45 a.m.
“It would periodically shut down,” said Brennan-Kyro.
A repairman was called in to address the problem, but by 10:45 a.m., administrators knew the school day was gone.
“The alarms would go off and we had to evacuate the building a couple times because even though we figured they were tied to the generator, you can’t ignore them,” said Brennan-Kyro.
Also, some interior rooms of the building have no access to outside lighting, so everytime the generator shut down, the students were left in the dark.
“We decided to send everyone home at the end of third hour which is around 10:45 a.m.,” said the superintendent. “It counts as a half day dismissal for us.”
The repairman found that the generator had a faulty relay switch and the repair was made quickly Monday night. Students were back in school again on Tuesday.
“The most important part is to get everything fixed,” said Brennan-Kyro. “That’s what really matters.”
The high school was not the only building affected by the lack of power. Brennan-Kyro stated that several other district buildings experienced problems with their phones because testing to find the damaged wire caused interference with the fiber-optic network.
“They were sending electrical impulses into the ground to determine the extent of the damage,” explained Brennan-Kyro. “However, the fiber optic cable for our phone lines runs right beside the electrical cable, so our phones were intermittently out on Wednesday.
As of deadline on Tuesday, repair crews planned on having the electric to the building restored by Wednesday morning. School officials had contacted the district’s insurance company; however, cost amounts would not be available until later in the week.