Archives for July 2000

Two men narrowly escaped with their lives last week when Hedley was the site of two separate train collisions within 24 hours.

Fire fighters look over the remains of Rodney McCracken’s semi-truck. The Hereford man was hit by a BNSF train last Thursday at Hedley.
Enterprise Digital Photo
 
The first accident happened Thursday, July 20. Reports say an eastbound Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) train struck a semi-truck driven by 30-year-old Rodney McCracken of Hereford.

McCracken was southbound on McDougal Street at about 9 a.m. when the impact occurred, rending the truck from its trailer and dragging it more than 100 feet.

The driver of the truck was taken to Northwest Texas Hospital where he was treated and released, reports say.

Driver inattention was given as the cause of the Hereford man’s accident.
 
Hedley man James Edward Potts suffered a broken neck after his Chevy pickup was hit by a BNSF train Friday at Hedley.
Enterprise Digital Photo
 
On Friday, July 21, another accident happened on the opposite side of Hedley at about 8 a.m.

DPS trooper Daniel Hawthorne said 45-year-old James Edward Potts of Hedley was eastbound on Railroad Street when he turned right on Bailey Street to cross the BNSF tracks.

An eastbound train struck Potts’ Chevrolet extended cab pickup in the passenger side door. The bed of the truck was torn loose and came to rest down the track from the mangled cab.

Potts is blind in his right eye, Hawthorne said, and he probably didn’t see the train coming.

The Hedley man was flown to Northwest Texas Hospital by Lifestar and was still in serious but stable condition Monday afternoon, a relative said.

Potts suffered a broken neck in the accident.

A major power failure last week plunged most of Clarendon into darkness and threatened the water supply for towns as far south as Crowell.

 
Workers for AEP-West Texas Utilities took down the historic WTU sign from the front of their Kearney Street office in Clarendon last week in preparation for closing the office later this month. In an unrelated incident four hours after the sign came down, the city was plunged into darkness when a AEP-WTU mobile substation failed.
Enterprise Digital Photo.
 
A mobile substation owned by AEP-West Texas Utilities (AEP-WTU) went down last Tuesday, July 18, at 6:49 p.m. Power was not restored for nearly eight hours.

A spokesman for AEP-WTU said Clarendon’s substation was undergoing routine maintenance, which involved cleaning and upgrading the transformers and insulators, when workers experienced a problem with the plant’s voltage regulator.

“The problem with the voltage regulator required immediate attention,” said Linda Caton, a communications consultant for AEP-WTU.

Workers transferred the city’s electrical load to two mobile substations to make repairs on the main substation, Caton said. A failed relay in the larger 5MW mobile substation caused the power outage.

With temperatures in the high 90s, residents quickly began feeling the effects of the outage as air-conditioners stopped all over town.

Commercial activity also died as service stations were unable to pump gas, and restaurants were unable to prepare meals.

B&R Thriftway manager Buddy James said his store has backups on the cash registers that are good for only about 20 minutes. After that, the town’s only supermarket was shut down. James said Thriftway lost some meat but other stock was not affected by the blackout.

Perhaps hardest hit was Greenbelt Municipal Water Authority, which provides water for several area towns including Clarendon and Hedley. With the power out, Greenbelt’s pumps were halted.

“The water towers in Clarendon were completely out before the power came back on,” said Greenbelt’s Bobbie Kidd. “The tower in Hedley was half empty, and the two million gallon ground storage tank east of Hedley was totally empty.”

Kidd said several miles of water pipeline to Childress were empty also.

“It affected us all the way to Crowell,” he said.

After the power came back on, Greenbelt began pumping non-stop to get caught up. Storage facilities were not filled until Sunday, Kidd said.

“We lost over nine hours of pumping time Tuesday night and had lost two hours during an outage the day before.”

Kidd said this was the second longest power failure Greenbelt Water had experienced in his 25 years with the authority. But, he said, the previous outage was in the winter, and there wasn’t a problem with running out of water.

Greenbelt has back up power only for its offices, and Kidd said purchasing a generator to run even one of the plant’s three-phase pumps is financially unfeasible.

Other back up power supplies around town kept critical functions online.

Chief Deputy Butch Blackburn said the generator at the Sheriff’s Department did get hot, but a box fan was enough to keep it running throughout the blackout.

GTE’s switching station has battery backups that power the city’s phones. Bob Curtis, a spokesman with GTE, said the company did have a generator in Memphis ready to move if it had been required.  However, the batteries still had several hours of power when the electricity came back on, he said.

Donley County Hospital District Administrator Alan Graham said the emergency generator at the Medical Center Nursing Home never missed a beat. The diesel-fueled generator provided priority power to critical systems without any problems.

A new backup generator that powers the countywide repeater tower also kicked in.  The repeater tower provides communications among local law enforcement, fire department, and emergency medical personnel.

The tower’s generator did “sound funny,” according to Graham. But it carried the load during the outage just fine.

“Emergency personnel were never out of communication,” he said.

Graham said the tower generator was disconnected over the weekend so it could be recalibrated but that it was back online by Monday afternoon.

Caton said AEP-WTU crewmen worked diligently to bring the city’s substation back online. Ten transmission service techs and three distribution service techs were in town working on the problem. Five dispatchers in Abilene were on the job also.

Power was restored at 2:34 a.m. Wednesday.

A smaller 3.75 MW mobile substation continued to operated normally during the outage and kept the lights on in parts of the north and east sides of town.

Nickless Devin (left) participating in activities at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Nickless Devin of Clarendon was one of 25 Texas high school students who spent a week at the Johnson Space Center in Houston using their math and science skills to design a human mission to Mars.

Devin was nominated by State Senator Tom Haywood to be a part of a unique educational experience called the Texas Aerospace Scholars Program.  The program is the result of a partnership between NASA – JSC and the State of Texas to encourage students to pursue engineering options in school.

After being nominated, Devin began the program with distance and web-based learning experiences that culminated in a one-week long visit to JSC in Houston.  Devin and his teammates used their imagination, coupled with math and science skills, to develop a plan for how humans will get to Mars and then learn to live and work on the planet’s surface.

Their expertise came from a series of classroom sessions, field trips, hands-on projects, and assistance from JSC employee-mentors who provided them with insight into the challenges of living and working in a hostile environment.

For more information on the TAS Program, visit the website at http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/

On July 8, thirteen area girl scouts with five leaders left on a trip to Washington and Canada. 

The girl scouts were Lacie Fincher of Wellington; Jessica Noland, Whitney Rodgers, Caitlin Smith, Ashley Stansbury, and Erika Thompson, all of Amarillo; and Laura Dziedzic, Meghan Gribble, Valerie Taylor, Lydia Hartman, Melissa McAnear, Kelsey McQuien, and Treva Rowland, all of Clarendon.  The girls along with Debbie Oliver, Julie Hartman, Medina Gribble,  Becky McAnear, and Linda Rowland have been planning this trip for over a year and a half. 

Their first stop was in Seattle, Washington, for two days where they explored the underground city in Pioneer Square, the Pike’s Market, and the Space Needle.  From Seattle they headed for Vancouver, stopping on the way to wander through the Minter Gardens.  Once they reached Vancouver, they visited Gastown and rode the sky train.  They also crossed the Capilano Bridge, which more of the leaders were afraid of crossing than the girls.  From Vancouver the girls went to Victoria.  The highlight of the entire trip was the Empress Tea Room in Victoria.  They experienced the true form of an afternoon English tea. 

The following day they visited the Craigdarroch Castle and went whale watching.  This was the first for all of the girls and a very exciting experience, especially when one of the whales came very close to the Zodiac they were in. 

On Friday, they rode a ferry back to the states and drove down to the Hoh Rainforest, the only rainforest in the United States.  The last day before flying back, they visited Mt. St. Helen, which exploded twenty years ago.

Together, they learned about our past, had fun, and developed a friendship that will last for many years.

Hedley duo Dustin Monroe and Roger Wade made an impressive showing at the Six-Man Coaches Association all-star game between the North and East boys at Monterey last week.  The Hedley athletes played for the North team.

Monroe led the team in scoring with 17 points for the game.  Wade scored a total of 12 points for the game, including six straight in the second half and four in the beginning of the fourth period.

The North defeated the  East, 75-64.

In the girls’ game, Hedley Lady Owl Ashley Hill put three points to the board in her team’s victory over the east in a rough and tumble all-star game on Friday against the East.

North defeated the East, 52-50.

WASHINGTON, DC – The US House of Representatives Monday afternoon passed H.J. Res. 72, legislation that will ratify the Red River Boundary Compact between Texas and Oklahoma and help put an end to a border dispute that dates back 200 years.

The bill, which was introduced by US Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Clarendon), was approved by a voice vote.  The bill establishes the boundary between the states of Texas and Oklahoma as the vegetation line on the south bank of the Red River, which leaves the riverbed itself under the jurisdiction of Oklahoma.

In addition to establishing the boundary between the two states, the measure also ensures that the property, claims, and sovereignty of federally recognized Native American tribes living in the area will not be altered by the Compact in any way.  The legislation is based on the boundary compact was approved last year by the Texas and Oklahoma legislatures and signed into law by Governors Bush and Keating.  If enacted, the Compact will take effect on August 31, 2000.

“One of Congress’ Constitutional duties is to ratify agreements like this between two or more states,” Thornberry said.  “If there’s any one thing that sets this agreement apart, it’s that it’s been so long in coming.  This boundary dispute dates back 200 years and has its roots in the Louisiana Purchase.

“So clearly, this is something that is long overdue and something that will hopefully make things easier for those who live and work in the surrounding area.”

H.J. Res. 72 must now be considered by the Senate.  A date for the vote has not yet been set.

American Electric Power (AEP)-West Texas Utilities (WTU) Clarendon office will remain open for customers to make bill payments until July 31, 2000.  After this date the front office will be closed for all customer transactions.

“We announced in February that the office would remain open until September 30, 2000; however, personnel changes have made it necessary for us to discontinue taking ‘walk-in’ payments sooner than we had originally planned,” said Jeff Thigpen, AEP-WTU area business manager.

All local phone calls to the Clarendon office will be forwarded to the Customer Service Center in Corpus Christi, which is available to accept calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Representatives at the Customer Service Center provide prompt attention to requests for service connection or disconnection, account information, outage reports, or to answer other questions that customers may have.  For customer service, the toll-free number to call is 888-216-3523.

Customers currently have a number of convenient bill payment options available.  These include by mail, by automatic bank draft through the DirectAdvantage Plan, Internet electronic bill payment through www.transpoint.com, and credit or ATM card payment via the telephone for the ChoicePay Plan.

The Clarendon office will continue to be used as a base of operations for service technician employees, Mike Proffitt and Leon Ward, who work in the energy delivery area of the business.

“While we’re making changes in the way we conduct business, our commitment to provide superior customer service and reliability hasn’t changed,” Thigpen said.