TAHOE Monday, August 28, 2000 6:27 AM

Power goes out at Stateline by Gregory Crofton, Appeal News Service

The lights went out on casino row Sunday afternoon.

A 14,000-volt circuit that feeds the gaming halls electricity malfunctioned around 3 p.m. The downed circuit kept the casinos and a handful of Stateline residents with partial power for a more than two hours.

"We're now restored, just this minute," said Dennis Lamey, director of engineering at Horizon Casino, at 5:05 p.m. "We have three emergency back up generators and they gave us most essential power like elevators. The casino of course stays up."

Full power to the rest of the casinos in the area was restored around 5:15 p.m. An engineer at Harrah's Lake Tahoe said during the power loss, gas went out on kitchen stoves, lights dimmed and flickered and generators and batteries had to be used to maintain gaming operations.

Lake Village, a group of condominiums about one-quarter of a mile north of Kingsbury Grade, still had only partial power at 5:45 p.m. Al Wilberg, a resident of Lake Village, said his lights were dim, his phone was out and his water pressure was weak.

"We have minimum power," he said, calling from a cell phone. "I'm getting by, but I'm curious to find out why it's out and how long it's going to be."

Gary Evans, operations manager of Sierra Pacific Power Company at South Lake Tahoe, said Lake Village is the only place that's residential on that circuit.

"We've found the problem, it's on Lake Village Drive," Evans said at 6:40 p.m. calling from the scene. "Some equipment blew up and the main feeder comes right down this street."

Evans said he hoped to have full power restored to the condominiums by 9 p.m.

Last night, homes at Tahoe Keys were without power for 30 minutes. Evans said a bad cable on 15th Street caused that power outage

http://tahoe.com/appeal/stories.8.28.00/TAHOE/1powe28Aug742.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 28, 2000