LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — A Lexington woman spent Saturday concerned about the possibility of a rolling blackout plunging her home into dangerous cold, like it did during an unplanned power outage on Friday night.
"Within 15 minutes I started losing feeling in my hands, my feet, they started tingling," Margie Cook.
It happened so quickly because her home is already cold, she said. The heaters simply don't do the job, only heating her home to around 40 degrees when the temperatures reached as low as they did Friday.
"We're already struggling to keep our homes warm so without that power to keep our homes warm we're gonna freeze to death," she said. "Somebody could have died last night."
Late Saturday night, a KU spokesperson told LEX18 that the rolling service interruptions had concluded.
Cook says power companies should find a way so they never occur.
Responding to a question from LEX18 about the outages, Governor Beshear said the last such a short amount of time that "they can keep everyone's house warm enough the way they are doing this."
The service interruptions can last about 30 minutes. Cook said that's too long, with her hands starting to feel numb after 15 minutes in the sub-zero temperatures. She worries about being asleep when the power shuts off, and dying from hypothermia.
A KU spokesperson told LEX18 the outages are a critical step they had to take to minimize impacts for their customers.
"It would be better for most to suffer through an outage that lasts a brief time rather than one with extended impacts," said Daniel Lowry, as spokesperson for Kentucky electric.
For Cook, the heating issues is just the latest in what has been a bad year for her family. Her father died in March and their home burned down in July. She'd been looking forward to cooking for her family on Christmas. That's impossible because their water pipes froze on Thursday. They can't host anyone because of the heating issues.
"It's really frustrating to know that this happened two days before Christmas," she said. "I'm honestly at my wits end. I told my boyfriend earlier I'm just ready to give up and throw in the towel."
Rolling blackouts are no longer expected for customers of LG&E and KU on Christmas Eve, according to spokesperson for the company.
In a release sent Friday night, LG&E and KU said that high energy demand was creating scattered power outages, as technicians worked “diligently” to minimize the impact.
