For immediate release

Feb. 5, 2009 — 9:30 a.m.

15,000 remain without power for Missouri electric cooperatives

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

Slow but sure progress continued in an all-out effort to restore power in southeast Missouri. Four southeast Missouri electric cooperatives reported a total of 15,090 members without power Thursday morning.

Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative, West Plains, was nearly complete on their outage repairs with about 160 still without power.

SEMO Electric, Sikeston, reports 4,000 still out. Most of their damage is centered on Stoddard County where hardly a pole remained standing in the wake of the outage. The cooperative has one substation remaining without service, and that is also located in Stoddard County.

SEMO’s Glen Cantrell said the cooperative estimates 90 percent of its members will be back up by a week from today and the entire system in two weeks.

Ozark Border Electric Cooperative, based in Poplar Bluff, has 3,430 members without power. “I talked to the manager at Ozark Border and he says they are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” says Mike Marsch, director of member services at the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives. “He says they expect to get the two remaining substations that are out back on line today or Friday. When that happens we will see big numbers coming back online for Ozark Border.”

The worst damage remains in the Missouri Bootheel, which is served by Pemiscot-Dunklin Electric Cooperative, Hayti. On Wednesday the cooperative took on 102 contractor crews released by Ameren. They have an additional 150 committed that should arrive today. These join the approximately 300 cooperative linemen from all parts of Missouri, Mississippi, Iowa and Louisiana that are working the outage.

Crews have energized about 200 homes located in the north part of the system around Portageville. Only two of the cooperative’s 14 substations have been energized in the wake of the storm. Hundreds of poles and miles of wire have been repaired, but the power can not flow to area homes until transmission lines are repaired.

Outage totals as of 9 a.m., Feb. 5 are as follows:

Howell-Oregon, West Plains: 160
Ozark Border, Poplar Bluff: 3,430
Pemiscot-Dunklin: 7,500
SEMO, Sikeston: 4,000

TOTAL: 15,090

For a look at how your co-op typically goes about the task of restoring electric service, visit http://www.amec.org/poweron.html

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