Ice Storm

[TXUNIONWKR]

Any one rolling out yet?

[CPOPE]

Any one rolling out yet?

More than 2,000 linemen from electric cooperatives in Arkansas and surrounding states are working to restore power.

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The Sun-Times
Fri Jan 30, 2009, 11:16 AM CST
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Arkansas -
Ten of Arkansas’ electric cooperatives continued to work Thursday to restore power to more than 178,000 members. This number is down from a peak of approximately 198,000 members on Wednesday.
Damage to the cooperatives’ distribution systems is extensive, with more than 7,800 poles down. Collectively, it is the most catastrophic damage to the cooperatives’ systems in their history.
Originally, 12 cooperatives were impacted by the ice storm. However, two cooperatives have fully restored power to members.
“While progress is being made, many of the cooperatives are facing a long rebuilding process,” said Doug White, vice president of systems services for the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas. “It takes about one and one-half an hour to reset a pole. This does not include time needed to clear trees and mangled lines.”
More than 2,000 linemen from electric cooperatives in Arkansas and surrounding states are working to restore power.The public is cautioned to avoid any downed power lines and to report them immediately to local authorities.



http://www.thesuntimes.com/news/x184...-downed-by-ice

[thrasher]

The Kentucky Association of Coops called Virginia's Association for help on Friday. Said to expect crews to be gone for at least a week. We sent one of our three crews. Took the crew between 10-11 hours just to drive there.

[CPOPE]

Frankfort, Ky. – Preliminary damage estimates – based primarily on utility damage – caused by the winter storm that ravaged Kentucky last week exceed $45 million, and Gov. Steve Beshear is asking the federal government to render even more aid.

Beshear asked President Barack Obama on Monday to declare Kentucky a “major disaster,” and to declare the state meets qualifications for 100 reimbursement of state costs during the first seven days of the disaster. If he does, the federal government would pick up the costs of overtime pay, debris removal and the cost of purchasing generators during those first seven days. Thereafter, the federal government would pay 75 percent with the state picking up the balance.

He’s also asking Obama to place the Kentucky National Guard on federal status. Beshear would remain in command but the federal government would pay all the costs of guard expenditures, including payroll, of the emergency response. Beshear has activated almost all the Kentucky National Guard to help in the recovery effort and some are working in every Kentucky county.

Their primary mission is to conduct door-to-door checks and followup on residents throughout the state. Brigadier Gen. John Heltzel, director of the Division of Emergency Management, said the first round of those checks should be complete in the next couple of days. A Guard military police battalion has also been sent to western Kentucky to discourage looting.

Beshear said there have been some “scattered reports” of looting in places like Muhlenberg and McCracken counties but the reports ceased almost immediately when the MPs arrived on the scene, Heltzel said. He said food commodities and water are being delivered to “every community that’s asked for it.”

Generators have been delivered to all nursing homes; hospitals have power; and the state is attempting to get water and sewer treatment plants without power back on line.

“We’re beginning to make substantial progress in getting communities back on their feet,” Beshear said, but the “breadth” of the disaster – “from the Mississippi River in the west to Boyd County in the east” – increases the difficulty, he said. “We’re doing much better in central Kentucky and the metropolitan areas but conditions are still pretty dire in western Kentucky.”

He said the biggest problem continues to be the scope of power outages, noting the number of major transmission lines, which often run through sparsely populated and hard to reach area, that are down and the time and difficulty involved in locating the break and moving equipment and personnel to the site to repair the line.

The number without power was down to 255,000 Monday afternoon, down from a peak of 700,000 last Thursday. He said there are 24 confirmed deaths from the storm, 10 by carbon monoxide poisoning from alternative fuel sources and the rest from hypothermia and accidents. He expects because of the length of the crisis and continuing winter weather that number is likely to increase. There are 165 emergency shelters housing 7,300, another number which is likely to grow as cold temperatures continue.

Beshear said he is “well satisfied” with the performance and effort of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA , which was heavily criticized during the response to Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast.

“Nothing ever happens as fast as you’d like it to,” Beshear said, “but I’m well satisfied. Everybody is putting forth 110 percent effort.” He said Obama has been quick to respond to Kentucky’s need for assistance.

“I have been extremely pleased with the quick response by President Obama and his administration.” Beshear said.

The $45 million damage figure is almost entirely based on estimates of damage by utility companies, and is likely to go much higher, Beshear said. Heltzel said actual damage assessment will begin after emergency needs have been provided and Obama issues the “major disaster” declaration.

[CPOPE]

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- As hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians lingered in the dark nearly a week after an ice storm wrecked the state's power grid, National Guard troops prepared to go door-to-door to check on residents.

Utility crews worked feverishly to restore electricity amid the largest state power outage on record. Guardsmen cleared roads with chain saws and some residents bundled up for another night around a wood-burning stove, looking for any way possible to stay warm.

With more than 700,000 Kentucky homes and businesses still without electricity Saturday, the state was a long way from recovering after an ice storm left a swath of destruction throughout the nation's midsection.

Kentucky was the hardest-hit. Monday's icy wallop encrusted a large part of the state in a mantle so thick it shattered utility poles, toppled trees and drove thousands from frigid homes to shelters. Officials had previously reported that 607,000 Kentucky customers were without power, but later said that figure didn't include municipal utilities or rural electric cooperatives within the Tennessee Valley Authority system.

Meanwhile, officials told those still shivering in dark, unheated homes to seek safe refuge in motels and places with power or generators.

"Too many people are trying to tough it out at home," Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo said.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear on Saturday deployed every one of his Army National Guardsmen. Authorities said they were investigating roughly a dozen deaths in Kentucky alone. A Louisville man who had been burning charcoal in a grill inside an apartment was apparently killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, the latest weather-related death.

The storm that began in the Midwest has been blamed or suspected in at least 42 deaths, including nine in Arkansas, six each in Texas and Missouri, three in Virginia, two each in Oklahoma, Indiana and West Virginia and one in Ohio. Most were blamed on hypothermia, traffic accidents and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Finding fuel - heating oil along with gas for cars and generators - was a struggle for those trying to tough it out at home. Hospitals and other essential services had priority over the public.

At an independent-living community in southwest Kentucky, apartments were pitch black at night but for candles, lanterns and flashlights that created a soft glow.

"I'm just trying to stay warm and trying to sleep," said Betty Sanders, 60, who donned extra shirts and socks at Lakeland Arbor Village in Aurora. "It's rough. It's very, very rough."

The ice storm had Sanders longing for her old home in Florida.

"I don't know how much longer I can handle it," she said. "I'm not used to this."

Some 4,600 Guardsmen have been pressed into service.

Spc. Jared Fox of Clarksville, Tenn., spent his first day in the Guard helping the storm relief effort.

"I was supposed to report this morning for my first weekend drill," said Fox, fresh from completing a four-year Army stint that included two tours in Iraq. "As it turns out, I'm activated."

Residents awaited relief amid warnings the outages could continue for weeks in some remote areas. The governor was undeterred when asked about how the state would pay for the recovery.

"The most basic duty of government is to protect the lives and safety of our people, and we have been pulling out all the stops and will continue to do so," Beshear told The Associated Press.

The city of Paducah was under a nighttime curfew. Capt. Don Hodgson of the Paducah police department said as of Saturday night there had been very few violations in the western Kentucky city of about 25,000.

Nearby, Angel Wyant has been eking out the days with the heat from a kitchen frier connected to a handheld propane tank.

"And a carbon monoxide detector," she points out, mindful of the dozens of deaths caused by the storm.

But the makeshift heater isn't much good when night falls, so Wyant, 32, and her three children have been staying overnight at the home of neighbor Rita Kelly, 53.

"We huddle around the old wood stove," said Kelly, whose two-bedroom aluminum sided house now shelters six people. After days of searching empty shelves, she and her husband bought a generator Saturday and were trying to hook it up.

"We about tapped out of money after buying that thing," Kelly said with a weak smile.

[cololinehand]

Hey all,
Actually, staying in Cape G???? to the north of Sikeston off of I-55. Sikeston was pretty hard hit. I have never seen an ice storm (from Colorado) do this much damage.

The muni (BMU) is taking pretty good care of us, serving a lunch in the ware house each day. I really feel for these people, we started on a bit of a political job, rebuilding a line that fed MODOT. Then moved in to the low rent district where the human cost was a lot more relevent. They have feeders still down and a crap load of services to take care of.

Take care out there and remember to cover your own asses and ground, ground, ground.

[bigsoupy]

anyone now if they need hands in the ice storm? looking for work.

[CPOPE]

Swamp, although your pals are comming home it sounds like there is pleanty of work for another month or so? The end of a storm saves the worst rural work for last

Storm-related death toll hits 25 as cold rolls in
February 4, 2009

Louisville Gas & Electric reported that power had been restored to nearly 90 percent of its customers. But overall, more than 250,000 Kentuckians remained without power.

Progress has been especially slow in Western Kentucky, where whole counties have lost power.

Gov. Steve Beshear toured that area yesterday, visiting Murray, Mayfield, Bardwell and Paducah. Though he cited progress, the governor noted, "we still have a great deal of work to do over the next several weeks."
A lot of that work involves getting power restored. Here's a statewide summary:

Statewide, about 256,000 customers are without power, according to Andrew Melnykovych, spokesman for the state Public Service Commission, down from more than 700,000 at the peak of the disaster.

That includes new figures -- 61,000 in areas served by the Tennessee Valley Authority and 13,000 served by municipal utilities.

In the Louisville area, 8,000 LG&E customers regained power yesterday, cutting the number without power to 23,000, or 11 percent of the peak outages.

About 54,000 Kentucky Utilities customers remained without power, roughly 27 percent of the peak.

Most of the power should be restored statewide in the next week, though customers in remote areas may have to wait two or three more weeks, said Dennis Cannon, a vice president of the Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives. The cooperatives serve many of the rural counties.

Efforts are "going as well as can be expected given the circumstances -- and the circumstances are grim," Cannon said, adding that several Western Kentucky cooperatives have half or more customers without power.

In rural counties, power lines are often in remote areas, Cannon said, and workers sometimes have to rely on farmers volunteering to pull heavy equipment in by tractor.

[THE KID]

I would like to Thank all of the linemen that came to Western, Ky and are still here restoring power.
I have been working 16 Hours restoring power in my system and it was nice to know that their where guys working to get my lights back on. Kenergy is still reporting 18,000 still out of power as of today. We have 3 crews going to help today till Wednesday then they will be swap out with 3 other crews so the guys can get some much needed rest.

Stay safe and Thanks Again.

THE KID

[CPOPE]

Sunday, Feb. 08, 2009
A no-frills office building next to agricultural rice paddies has become the nerve center for efforts to restore power to three of the hardest-hit counties in southern Missouri's worst ice storm in memory.

Here, receptionists at the Pemiscot-Dunklin Electric Cooperative field phone calls and walk-in visits from some of the 8,600 customers who have been without power for 14 days, and face two more weeks of the same.

Down the hall, inside the "war room" of the cooperative that sprang from rural electrification in 1937, the mood is intense.

A Jan. 26-27 ice storm wiped out entire systems for transmitting and distributing electricity across a wide swath of southern Missouri. About 17,000 people still remain without electricity. The high was 100,000.

Besides the immediate pain of getting communities back on-line, utility officials in some of the state's poorest counties wonder where they'll get the millions of dollars they estimate they'll need to virtually rebuild their entire networks.

Pemiscot-Dunklin, which serves the so-called Missouri Bootheel counties of Pemiscot, Dunklin and New Madrid, was the hardest-hit of five Missouri electric cooperatives affected by the storm. Eighty percent of the cooperative's 1,500 miles of lines and poles were destroyed, Crawford said.

As they reconstruct distribution lines and poles, their mother sources of electric transmission are rebuilding their own networks. It's only when the two marry that power can be restored to customers like 80-year-old Marietta Walker, who relies on a gas generator and stove to heat her home.

"I guess I'll make it," she said. "Lord, they forgot about us back here."

Walker lives in one of the nicer homes of impoverished Hayti Heights, a virtual ghost town of unelectrified and abandoned wooden hovels, untended dogs, junked cars, and shanties whose front doors are propped closed with wood stumps.

Walker is old enough to remember the days before rural electrification, when her husband stayed awake stoking a coal or wood stove as the family slept.

On Friday, wrapped in a pale-pink robe and slippers, she took pity on a small stray that let himself in from the cold the night before.

"He'd have frozen unless I left him in," she said.

Back at the electric cooperative, located on a state highway halfway between Hayti and Kennett, utilities managers are directing lineman crews in the field by cell phone, poring over maps and ordering supplies directly from manufacturers. Large trucks pull around the back to unload power poles and heavy equipment.

Tim Davis, Pemiscot-Dunklin's operations manager, got help from Jerry Wellington, on loan from Crawford Electric Cooperative in Bourbon. Davis said he encouraged his peer to jump in and make decisions because the job of coordinating efforts in the field is too big for one person.

In the last few days, Pemiscot-Dunklin has gotten a welcome infusion of more than 700 linemen, along with trucks and equipment, to buttress their own modest staff. Half are from electric cooperatives in Missouri, Iowa, Louisiana and Mississippi; the others are out-of-state contract workers released by AmerenUE after its customers got back online.

They start each day with a 5:30 a.m. breakfast briefing at an area dining hall and words to boost their spirits on the progress of their enormous task.

The community knows they're here. A church sign off Interstate 55 says, "God Bless Utility Workers."

On Jan. 27, the region awakened to a light rain that persisted for 2 1/2 days as temperatures hovered at 32 degrees. A 6-inch diameter of ice formed on the lines, and the sheer weight of the ice uprooted poles and anchors and snapped lines, devastating the system.

Crawford, who's been without power himself since the first day, says he still turns on the TV out of habit.

"I've got to laugh about it so I don't cry," he said.

Crawford expects it will take two weeks to restore power to all his customers. But much depends on the transmission provider, Poplar Bluff-based M&A Electric Power Cooperative, which lost 2,400 poles and 180 miles of line.

"This was a massive, massive hit," said John Farris, M&A's chief executive and general manager. "I've been doing this work since 1963, and never seen anything like this. There were 10,000 pounds of ice on each pole. They're not designed for that."

Farris said it will cost $80 million to rebuild its infrastructure, and that customers will pay for it in the end, even if Missouri succeeds in getting federal disaster funds.

Still, some are finding reason to cheer.

Pemiscot-Dunklin outfitted motels in Steele and Marston with generators so they could house their loaned linemen. The popular eatery "Shorty's" in Holcomb (HAWK'-em) got the same in order to cater two hot meals and a bag lunch every day.

The men dine on ribs, fried chicken, country-style cole slaw, baked beans, corn on the cob, and fresh fruit cobbler or cream pies topped with 2-inch meringue.

In this economic downturn, "I was tickled to death" to have the business, owner Ronald Dean "Shorty" Cross said.

In Senath (SEEN'-eth), population 1,650, the town is caring for its own in the crisis.

Two churches are running a shelter. Volunteers are delivering meals to the homebound. A handyman is coordinating repairs. The grocer's wife is looking after the town's elderly.