Following some natural/human disaster, the power goes out in your home. You immediately panic, worrying about the food in the refrigerator, dinner tonight, wild children running around, and the lack of TV reception.

Now imagine a workforce of 165, with the power  out - no lights, computers and only enough battery power for the emergency lights on the stairwells to last a short time.

Government, like business must prepare for any outages that have and will undoubtedly occur in the future.

Wayne County is no different. The last major outage in Lyons sent the work staff home for days and was not only  inconvenient for the  uneasy public during a power outage,  but expensive for the County.

To prevent interruptions in service at all major county buildings, a five year plan was put in place to either upgrade, or install, enough backup power to handle emergency services.

On Wednesday a budgeted $280,000 diesel generator was lifted into place for the County Hall of Justice, with a 600 gallon diesel tank on the bottom to supply the fuel. Without interruption, or refueling, it is enough to run the massive machine for three days.

Colacino Electric won the bid for the project with current installation to be completed in October.

The question arrises...Why diesel fuel and not simply tap into existing natural gas lines for continual service? 

The County discovered that after a gas powered generator installed at the Court Houses simply drained the existing gas lines, not only for the County, but other area natural gas users.

The new 300KVA (300,000 watts) “big ass” generator has enough power   along with the other installed diesel generators to cover all the county buildings.

The only building left to get a generator next tear under the five year plan is the County Social Services Building on Water Street in Lyons.