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Ice Storm Hammers Northwest Corner of FEC Territory February, 2008, Rural Missouri special edition
"We were very lucky when compared to some of our fellow electric cooperatives in this part of the state,” said FEC CEO Mike Sanders. “Electric utilities, in general, to the west and north of us were hit a lot harder than we were. ”The ice storm of 2007 was far different from the ice storms that rolled through FEC’s service territory in 1995 and 2002. In the previous two ice storms, over 5,000 homes and businesses were impacted, knocking out power to everyone at about the same time. The December 2007 ice storm more or less knocked out power in a haphazard fashion. Crews would return power to 300 members and have about 100 members left to restore full power to the system and then several more lines would suddenly go off. The first outage was reported on Monday, December 10, just before midnight. Over the next several hours five FEC crews were called out and by dawn had almost every member back in service. Unfortunately, the storm worsened and more lines began to break. The decision was made Tuesday morning to bring in contractors, who were standing by on call, to support FEC crews. Crews worked from 6 a.m. to around 11 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. Each night when the crews were sent home, there would be only about 100 meters without power. With the heavy weight on the power lines and none of it melting, gusting winds were another problem crews had to deal with. Overall, Operations Manager Stan Brickhouse estimated approximately 400 FEC lines broke as a result of the storm. By Thursday morning, December13, FEC crews and contractors had nearly everyone restored with power when a transmission line from the cooperative’s power supplier dropped to the ground. The transmission line provided service to six FEC substations, and 25 substations overall in the northwestern part of Missouri. Nearly 3,500 FEC members lost power as a result of the transmission line failure. It took several hours for the transmission line to be repaired. Crews then brought the substations back on one at a time. Individual and line outages continued to happen throughout Thursday afternoon and evening. By midnight Thursday, nearly everyone had power restored. “One of the things that we feel made a big difference in having fewer outages than some utilities was brush cutting program, ”Sanders said. “We had a lot of ice, but by having that program in place we were able to keep many trees from falling through our lines. ”Sanders also cited FEC’s Tree Replacement Program as another factor in keeping outages down. “I’m proud of our employees,” said Sanders. “They worked long, hard hours in difficult circumstances to get our system back up and running. They did a great job.”
Related information... FEC’s Tree Replacement Program
Helps to Improve Overall Service Reliability Tree limbs in power lines can cause disruptions in service, including those annoying blinks. Trees that are too close to power lines also create a potential problem when ice storms cross the area. The weight of the ice on the limbs can cause the limbs to drop onto power lines that are already stretched to capacity. Plus, trees can fall through power lines, which takes even longer to repair and to restore service. The TRP allows FEC to remove a tree near a primary service. A new tree is planted away from the power lines in the area, by a professional, at no cost to the member. Members have a variety of trees to choose from. This helps to eliminate amajor service reliability problem. Contact Joe Timmons at 660-646-4281 or 1-800-279-0496 to reserve your new tree. See our Tree Replacement Program flyer from the January, 2008, Rural Missouri magazine. This is a large size PDF file, so please wait for it to download to your computer. |
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CAPTION:
Scott Dominique (in the bucket) and Mike Epperson (foreground) repair one of
hundreds of broken power lines north of Jameson.
