Why Salem lost electric power

“That must have been some strong wind that blew thru there.” That’s what the spokesman for Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative says about the cause for yesterday’s early morning outage that affected Salem and one and a half hours of programming on 101.7/WGOG. Blue Ridge’s Terry Ballenger says it was a straight line wind that blew thru the Salem area and dropped trees on top of three of four circuits. Those simultaneous incidents caused the breaker in the substation to go out. Power was out shortly before 6 am and crews were able to restore most service by 7:45.