By By Janet Little Cooper
The City of Atmore Utilities Department recently purchased a Kohler 200 KW diesel generator to power the entire City Hall complex during electrical outages.
The City of Atmore will share in the cost of the $43,768.00 generator with the Utilities Board.
The generator has a John Deere motor and a 400 gallon fuel tank. It is equipped with an automatic roll over switch that will automatically start the generator within 10 seconds of power outages.
Swift Lumber assisted in the installation of the near 8000-pound generator on Wednesday.
The Utilities Board is a Kohler dealer and sells residential generators along with natural gas generators. The cities generator is ten times the size of a residential one.
"We had an opportunity through our own Utility Board with them being a dealer, to purchase this." Mayor Howard Shell said, "With all the devastation along the Gulf Coast, generators are scarce to come by, so we felt that we needed to act as fast as possible while they were available since we are still in hurricane season."
According to Tom Wolfe, Atmore Utilities Board chairman, the generator will power the entire city hall complex including the police and fire departments as well as the utilities department.
"We had a lot of torn up gas lines during Ivan." Wolfe said, "And we tried to operate off of radios that kept going out. I've worked by flashlight for both Ivan and Dennis."
The generator will take care of all emergency equipment as well as everyday operations in case of emergency situations.
"I think it is a major step in being able to keep our radios and computers operational." Shell said, "All of those are so vital to our communications in an emergency situation."
"We learn from each storm we go through." Glenn Carlee, Director of Public Safety, said, "We had limited capabilities during previous storms. We are definitely better prepared now."