For immediate release

Feb. 1, 2009 — 1:45 p.m.

Army of workers helps restore electric co-op power

View the latest information about Missouri co-op systems affected by winter storms.

A mass mobilization of men and equipment is on the ground in the south-central Ozarks and the Missouri Bootheel as efforts to restore power reach critical mass for Missouri’s electric cooperatives.

There are currently 25,000 electric cooperative members without power at the five affected cooperatives. That is half the total reported at the height of the disaster.

“The good news is we are down to 4,563 outages and there are 175 men on the ground. That’s an unprecedented number for us,” says Myles Smith with Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative. “The bad news is we expect work on a lot of individual accounts to go slowly.”

Workers at Howell-Oregon Electric, White River Valley Electric, Ozark Border Electric, SEMO Electric and Pemiscot-Dunklin Electric cooperatives are being challenged by fallen trees, damaged poles and deep mud in their quest to restore power. “The first two days, the biggest problem was a lot of trees across the roads,” Howell-Oregon’s Smith said. “Oregon and Howell county road crews along with the National Guard did a great job getting those removed. Now the big problem is mud. Our crews are getting stuck and are losing time.”

Neighboring White River Valley Electric, based in Branson, is mopping up the last 169 outages. White River Valley was seeing numbers go up and down all weekend as trees and damaged poles continued to fall. The biggest problem area for the co-op has been Ozark County.

At Pemiscot-Dunklin Electric, which serves the Missouri Bootheel, crews focused on getting Substation 10, located south of the New Madrid Power Plant, back on line. Power has been restored to a rice plant and motels critical to the restoration effort. Line crews working in the area are being housed at the University of Missouri’s Delta Research Center and the few motels that have power.

“We have a long way to go, but there are 200 people working on the problem,” says Pemiscot-Dunklin manager Charles Crawford. “We have another 35 on the way. Right now, we are spotting loads of poles in the rural area so they will be convenient to the crews. It looks a lot better as we see poles going in the ground.”

On Saturday, linemen and equipment from Coast Electric in Mississippi headed to the Bootheel to repay a favor. When Hurricane Katrina hit Coast’s service area along the Gulf of Mexico in 2005, Missouri’s electric cooperatives were among the first to come to their assistance.

Crawford says the co-op is working to get generators to power essential services until the transmission backbone, which was virtually wiped out by the storm, is repaired. Water districts, nursing homes and school districts will be the first to receive the generators.

On Friday, Jan. 30, most of the ice melted off lines. While that is good news, it left behind wet, muddy conditions for the crews working in the Bootheel. “There’s water standing everywhere,” Crawford said. “A lot of mud.”

At Ozark Border Electric Cooperative based in Polar Bluff, the falling ice caused major concerns. When ice comes off lines it causes them to bounce up and down, enough that the two lines can come into contact and burn in half. As a precaution, Ozark Border shut down some of the substations that had been energized.

Manager Stanley Estes says his cooperative has made great progress since the early days of the storm. Outages are down to 5,200, with the biggest problem area currently centered around Malden where the cooperative’s last de-energized substation is located. “We’ve got a lot of poles to set around there in order to get people back on,” Estes says. “It’s going to be slow. It will be days if not weeks.”

He says Ozark Border employees estimate the cooperative lost 1,000 poles due to the heavy ice. It can take two to three hours for crews working in good conditions to set just one pole.

Contractors are adding 14 more crews to the hundreds already at work on Ozark Border’s lines today. In addition, more tree trimmers have been called in to clear fallen limbs from lines.

SEMO Electric Cooperative in Sikeston also reported making progress. SEMO now has approximately 8,000 members without service. Only two substations are without transmission service.

“We had 2,600 poles and miles and miles of line down,” said SEMO’s Glen Cantrell. “But we are making progress. We got Bell City on last night.”

SEMO has close to 150 additional linemen working in their service area. Six more crews from a contractor were in route Sunday.

Outage totals as of Feb. 1 are as follows:

White River Valley, Branson: 169
Howell-Oregon, West Plains: 4,563
Ozark Border, Poplar Bluff: 5,200
SEMO, Sikeston: 8,000
Pemiscot-Dunklin: 7,000

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Editor's Note: For media inquiries, contact Jim McCarty at 573-680-2451