Just as the noon rush hour was set to begin at restaurants and businesses throughout the Boones Creek and Gray areas, everything went dark on the electrical grid.

Restaurants and residents immediately prepared themselves for the worst because our area had grown so accustomed to outages in the past few months. But this problem was traced to the source quickly.

"It knocked out our substations in Boones creek and gray, J.T. McSpadden with the Johnson City Power Board said. “All of those customers in those areas had power knocked out and a result of that we talked to TVA. They told us the restoration time could be a bit lengthy."

The power board knew how urgent the need is for customers during the heat of the day for air conditioning and to keep business moving. They decided to implement an emergency plan.

"Our engineers took matters into their own hands,” McSpadden continued. “We began to back feed and reroute power from our other feeds and in doing that in about 25-30 minutes we were able to get the Boones Creek and Gray substations turned back on."

That quick thinking and immediate fix will hold until the TVA gets the issue resolved and left customers very thankful it was taken care of fast.

"Awesome. they did an awesome job,” Beef O’Brady’s manager Henry Reynolds said. “I thought it was going to be a lot longer and hurt our lunch rush but they got it back on and it turned out to be a really great lunch."

"They really did. Because what I understand it was a really wide area,” Store Clerk Debra Bradford said. “They did really well. It was off for what? About 25 minutes or something like that? It wasn't bad. I’m not sure what caused it but you can expect anything with the weather we have had."

The advanced planning of the Johnson City power board made a big difference for a lot of people on a very hot day.