For immediate release
Contact: Jim McCarty
(573) 659-3402
(573) 680-2451
 

Jan. 19, 2007

Recovery from massive ice storm continues in rural areas

Missouri electric cooperatives along the Interstate-44 corridor continue to make progress restoring power following the worst ice storm in memory. A number of co-op systems have experienced unprecedented damage, some with 60-70 percent of their infrastructure lying on the ground.

Ironically, recovery efforts were hampered today as melting ice allowed power lines to snap together causing further outages.

As of noon Friday, an estimated 39,000 rural electric cooperative consumers in Missouri remained without power — down significantly from the peak of 120,000 affected consumers immediately following the storm. Ozark Electric Cooperative, Mount Vernon, had the most outages with 11,000 members (roughly half its total) without power. Also hard hit are Gascosage Electric Co-op, Dixon, with 5,000 members out; Lebanon-based Laclede Electric Cooperative, with 8,000 outages; New-Mac Electric of Neosho, with 4,000 members out; and Southwest Electric Cooperative, Bolivar, which is working to restore power to 6,000 members.

Barry Electric, Cassville; Crawford Electric, Bourbon; Intercounty Electric, Licking; and Three Rivers Electric of Linn all had less than 1,000 member each still without power.
Several co-ops, including Sac Osage Electric in Eldorado Springs, Mansfield-based SeMaNo, and Cuivre River Electric of Troy, had completed storm recovery.

Each of the electric cooperatives has relied on outside help to tackle recovery efforts. To date, more than 440 linemen from unaffected co-ops in Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi have joined recovery efforts in Missouri. In addition, large numbers of contract linemen are also participating in recovery efforts.

For more information, contact Jim McCarty at the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives — (573) 635-6857, ext. 3402, jmccarty@amec.org.

 
-30-