Power restoration efforts continue at three Missouri electric cooperatives following devastating windstorms that ripped through the Ozarks Friday, May 8. As of Wednesday morning, nearly 8,000 electric co-op members were still without power. Even as work continues, all eyes are on the weather as more storms are forecast in the coming days.
The largest concentration of outages is in a nine-county area served by Black River Electric Cooperative. The Fredericktown-based co-op currently has 6,500, or one-fourth of its membership, without power. Licking-based Intercounty Electric Cooperative is working to restore power to 800 members, while Citizens Electric Corporation of Ste. Genevieve reports about 680 outages.
The three co-ops are among 20 member-owned, non-profit electric utilities that experienced outages from Friday’s storm, which initially knocked out power to 70,000 Missouri electric cooperative members.
Together, the cooperatives still recovering from Friday’s storm serve an area that stretches from Rolla and Houston to the west all the way to the Mississippi River. Throughout the affected region, line workers struggle to rebuild downed lines in wet, muddy conditions along once-clear rights of way that are now a jumbled maze of toppled trees and other storm debris.
Tree damage is especially bad in remote areas served by Black River Electric Cooperative. Many of that co-op’s lines pass through dense woods and large parcels of national forest land.
“There’s so much of the area that’s accessible only by off-road equipment – skidders, bulldozers, that kind of thing,” says Black River Electric Cooperative spokesman John Singleton. “We’re having to pull in and pull out of some areas with dozers to get the trucks into the work sites. That really slows things down.”
A bigger challenge, Singleton says, is the debris that blocks access to downed power lines and broken poles. Although the co-op’s line maintenance program creates a swath of clear ground around power poles, 30-foot rights of way were no match for mighty oaks and other trees toppled in Friday’s storm.
“Our rights of way were in very good shape, but it’s only 15 feet from the center line,” Singleton says. “If you’ve got a 30-foot tree on the edge of the right of way, it’s going to take down that line.”
Estimates are that more than 1,500 utility poles have been damaged or destroyed along Black River’s lines. Intercounty and Citizens each report almost 300 poles down.
At each of the three co-ops, power restoration efforts are being bolstered by reinforcements dispatched through the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperative emergency assistance program. Black River Electric Cooperative has nearly 550 line workers and right-of-way personnel on the ground, while Citizens has added an additional 108 linemen and Intercounty has hired additional right-of-way contractors and is receiving line reconstruction help from several Missouri co-ops unaffected by the recent storm.
While recovery efforts continue, forecasts of additional severe storms worry co-op officials. New storms could bring additional damage and further worsen working conditions.
“At the very least that slows us down,” Singleton says of a new round of storms predicted for Wednesday through Saturday. “We’re concerned that some trees that were weakened and partially uprooted during the first storm will come on over. We’re concerned about what it’s going to do to the ground conditions. Obviously, we don’t want any of the lines we’ve put back up to go back down, but that’s always a possibility.”
Another concern to co-ops still battling last week’s storm damage is the possibility that their reinforcements could get called home to restore power if severe weather strikes their co-ops.
“We may lose some of this help that we’ve got,” says Susan Parish of Intercounty Electric Cooperative. “If they have storms in their area, they’re going to have to go back home.”
Even without the likelihood of new storms, recovery efforts are expected to take several more days at Intercounty Electric and in Citizens’ service area. The devastation is so great in the area served by Black River Electric that recovery will take much longer there.
“The current estimate of 7-10 days will change as progress and setbacks occur,” says Singleton. “The important thing to remember is that it will be an extended period of time before power is restored to everyone.”