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Fire at Cumberland Fossil Plant

March 23, 2004

• A fire in Unit 2 at Cumberland Fossil Plant near Cumberland City, Tennessee, started shortly after 10 p.m. CST Monday, March 22, when hydraulic fluid spilled from a line and ignited from the heat of the equipment.

• TVA shut down the unit, and the plant’s firefighting team along with firefighters from Stewart and Houston counties and Cumberland City extinguished the fire. The smoldering fire was completely extinguished by about 2:15 a.m.

• There were no injures, and there was no major damage to the unit. A cleanup is under way.

• A TVA team will investigate the cause of the spill and subsequent fire. The unit will be kept off line to begin a planned maintenance outage that was scheduled to start later this week.

• Unit 1 at Cumberland is operating at full power, and TVA was able to replace the power from Unit 2 from other sources of generation. Each unit has a net rating of 1,265 megawatts.