Engineers act fast to restore power at Travis

Published Jan. 5, 2012
By 60th Civil Engineer Squadron

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- When the power unexpectedly went out in Travis base housing early in the morning Dec. 23, Balfour Beatty Communities quickly dispatched maintenance crews to determine the cause.
Electricians from the 60th Civil Engineer Squadron supported BBC and their contractor, Contra Costa Power, and began running tests at the substation to determine the cause and isolate the fault.

Contra Costa began testing cables and transformers throughout housing while base Civil Engineers tested and changed out substation breakers and relays to ensure they weren't what caused the outage. Even if the problem was located that evening, acquiring parts would be a challenge for BBC since local vendors would not likely be open until Monday.

On the morning of Dec. 24, Lt. Col. James Downs, 60th CES commander, stood up his unit control center. The 60th CES electrical team began formulating a plan that would eventually restore power to the 242 houses without electricity. Shortly afterward, the 60th CES electricians located the faulty circuit and isolated it from the system. Meanwhile, a separate crew of electricians checked transformers and switches to look for a way to feed the area from another circuit. Within two hours, electricians devised a plan and began assembling the components, equipment and high voltage cable necessary to make repairs.

The civil engineer unit control center and Balfour Beatty Communities used Facebook and email to keep residents, commanders, chiefs and first sergeants updated on the progress of repair.

Many residents were placed in base lodging, friend's houses or off-base hotels and holiday plans were disrupted.

According to Enos Drummond, 60th CES high voltage electrical foreman his electricians refused to allow holiday plans to be disrupted for those families.

Once given the OK, electricians shut down power to another housing circuit and grounded the electrical switch on the corner of Virginia and Wyoming Streets. During the repairs, Col. Dwight Sones, 60th Air Mobility Wing commander, watched the crew methodically perform the required repair activities.

The electricians faced several challenges while making repairs, including crawling into a four by six foot switch housing to cut conduit, dealing with stagnant standing water in the bottom of the manhole and manually pulling 1,000 feet of cable by hand to avoid damaging it and having to start over.

As repairs were underway, instant praise from residents was shown on the Facebook posts and by those passing by and stopping to say thanks. Nearby residents delivered hot chocolate, candy, coffee, pizza, cookies, water and other goodies as gestures of appreciation.

Civil engineers were not the only ones providing support to help restore power. The 60th Maintenance Squadron's aerospace ground equipment shop delivered two light cart generators to the repair site just before the sun went down to ensure the repairs could safely continue without interruption.

According to Tech. Sgt. Kory Kaiser, 60th CES electrical shop NCO in charge, meeting their goal and delivering electricity to all of housing Dec. 24 was very gratifying. He was especially proud of his team, all of whom volunteered to give up their time off, to do whatever it took to support their extended military family.

Kaiser said this was a great opportunity to showcase our in-house capabilities.