Jun. 11--By Teresa Williams

teresa.williams@gaflnews.com

THOMASVILLE -- Thomasville Utilities CNS representatives say a small number of stations are still out after a weekend lightning strike damaged the system.

"Since we put the head end in September 1999 and first began serving customers we have had zero lightning impact," Don Atkinson, assistant city manager of utilities, said Wednesday. "That changed at 4:50 p.m. Friday when a storm system came through and lightning struck our tower. It was a major hit and we lost 95 percent of our 232 channels."

Four channels are still out: 220, the Tennis Channel; 265, the Church Channel; 266, JCTV; and 410, NASA TV. All are on a digital tier.

Chris White, technology resources operations manager, said staff is not sure exactly what was the initial point of impact, but lightning did damage the tower and its concrete foundation.

"We have one tower responsible for all local broadcast stations," he said. "Ironically, even though there was physical damage to the tower, we did not lose services that fed off the tower, but lost service from satellite reception dishes. Ten of the 11 dishes and the electronics associated with them were affected by the strike."

Ninety percent of service was restored by midnight Friday, but there were some residual problems on Saturday.

Approximately 19,000 customers in the four CNS cities -- Cairo, Thomasville, Camilla and Moultrie and their surrounding communities served by CNS -- lost service from the strike, city staff said.

Atkinson gave an overview of the situation to Thomasville City Council at its Monday workshop.

Councilman Roy Campbell asked if information on the outage had been placed on channel 10, the government access channel, or could be placed on it in the future to alert customers of a service situation.

Both city officials said Wednesday this is possible on 10 or channel six, local origination.

The channels still out are expected to be on air again by the end of the week, White said.

"We're awaiting some equipment to get the others back on," he said. "We are working diligently to acquire the necessary electronics to get this content back in service."

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