AEP putting in new lines

Tonight, sometime between 4-7:30 p.m., the Ironton City Center will be closed up tight and it will be dark.

That’s because AEP is installing a new power line nearby on 3 1/2 alley and has scheduled a power outage until the installation is complete.

Mayor Katrina Keith said the city got an email from AEP.

“We’ve watched it for a couple weeks now, lay lines and put in poles on 3 1/2 alley,” she said. “They sent us an email saying that our power would be off starting around 4 p.m. on Thursday and to expect it to be off until 7 or 7:30 p.m.”

Since most of the city offices close at 4 p.m. that won’t affect citizens much but it did require some changes on the city’s part.

That means the Ironton City Council won’t meet in their chambers on the third floor of the building. Instead, they will move it a couple blocks over to the Ironton Fire Department for their regular scheduled meeting.

City departments spent Wednesday making sure their computer systems were backed up.

“In an average store, you just shut that off and it’s fine,” Keith said. “But in the City Center we have the police, which is a 24-hour shift and they still need to use the phones and the computers.”

Police dispatching is done through the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office, so that won’t affect how calls in the city are handled.

Keith said they do have to worry about the computer systems in departments like finance, the  municipal court and the water department.

“We will have our IT coming in around 3:30 p.m. to make sure all of our systems will be ready when the power comes back on,” she said.

Finance Director John Elam said that they already had an IT guy in.

“We’ve prepared for it. We are planning on running a full system back up before the power outage,” he said. “We are prepared so the data for the City of Ironton won’t be compromised and we’ve notified everyone that maintains customer data. So, we are pretty comfortable that we have everything in place and we are prepared for it.”