Midwest Storm

[Electriceel]

How bad was the storm in central and eastern Iowa over the weekend. Heard IOU's Alliant and MEC had numerous outages.
How about the Coops?
How about the Municipals?

[WAlinehand1970]

How bad was the storm in central and eastern Iowa over the weekend. Heard IOU's Alliant and MEC had numerous outages.
How about the Coops?
How about the Municipals?

My old man is running a crew for L.E. Myers back there. He said its a mess. Something like 260,000(statewide) out at 6 a.m., when I talked to him this morning. Also, they sold all the poles to Nebraska a few weeks ago, and alot of the wire, too. He's working somewhere around Grundy Center.

[playtime]

South Dakota Utility Crews Headed To Iowa



130,000 people in Iowa are still in the dark after the weekend storm.

The two major energy companies in the state are bringing in extra workers, including a crew of two dozen linemen from Northwestern Energy in South Dakota. It's an experience all too familiar for these men.

Thousand of downed utility poles and hundreds of miles of lines on the ground: it's the scene across Iowa, reminiscent of South Dakota's big ice storm in November 2005.

Foreman Ward Gilchrist says, "We could have never handled it without help. We had contractors from all over the United States just about. You need help. You just can't staff for something like this."

Lineman Jerry Ehlke says, "We were devastated, the system as bad as it got knocked down we couldn't have done it by ourselves it would have took us a longtime. Of all the crews that come in, now we're just paying back the favor."

They're paying back the favor by heading to Mason City, where nearly 10,000 people are without power. These linemen will spend the week on a job they know will be difficult.

Gilchrist says, "It's long hours, hard work, slipping and sliding all the time. You're getting stuck, it's one thing after the other."

But it's also rewarding. Ehlke says, "Kind of a joint deal and everybody gets together gets everything going and when lights come on at the end of the night you know you made a big accomplishment."

The crews will take nine trucks in all. As they head out for the week of icy, cold work, they have little doubt they'll be rewarded with getting the lights back on.

Ehlke says, "Makes it all worth it."

The linemen come from six different South Dakota communities and expect to be working in mostly rural areas in Iowa.

[WAlinehand1970]

I talked to Dad agian this a.m.. They were headed to Conrad, which is north of Marshalltown. Still just doing wreck-out. No poles yet. Still lots of distribution on the ground, and lots of customers still out.
Playtime's right about the slipping and sliding. They were in a white-out when I talked to him today, with more weather moving in.

[T-Saw]

what happened? lol where did my nice long description go? it just disappeared lol
Well long story short, everyone I talked to agreed , that this was the worst ice storm in Iowa history.
Alliant had approx 1500 poles down
Mid -Am had less than 1000
The R.E.A s across the state had 4300

I stayed mostly in the eastern 1/3 of the state where it wasn't as bad , but we still had customers out until Monday afternoon..(9 days is a long time for an Iowan, and it's going to be even longer for many of them )

Well I gotta go . If I get a chance tomorrow I'll try to get a little more descriptive.

[graybeard]

Got back from Waterloo on Sunday night. They had all on in that area on Sat night. The motel we stayed at had lots of contractors staying there and we got up on Sunday morning they were all gone. As in packed up and left. Lots of 161 and 69 down but all the subs were hot. Guessing getting poles is going to be a problem. Some of the guys I worked with last week are heading out again in the morning back east for proubly 2 weeks to put back up some 69.