For immediate release

Feb. 13, 2009 — 10:30 a.m.

New-Mac lends helping hand following ice storm

“Who wants to be first to be kissed?” exclaimed the elderly woman, an Ozark Border Electric Cooperative customer, who was helping to feed the visiting linemen. That lady and thousands of her fellow southeast and south-central Missouri co-op members are indeed grateful for the assistance they’re receiving from New-Mac Electric Cooperative of Neosho, and from other cooperatives from across the state.

Linemen from Neosho-based New-Mac Electric Cooperative prepare to replace a utility pole brought down by ice storms which struck Ozark Border Electric Cooperative in January. New-Mac was one of dozens of Missouri electric cooperatives that sent help following the devastating storms.

“Basically, anybody that can be spared has been sent to help,” said New-Mac’s operations manager, Alan Loehr. “And that’s pretty much the case with all the Missouri co-ops.” New-Mac has sent 18 men and 10 vehicles in two waves of assistance to Ozark Border Electric Cooperative, headquartered in Poplar Bluff.

The Missouri Bootheel and neighboring counties to the west were blasted with ice in the early morning hours of Jan. 27, knocking out power to more the 100,000 homes in the
immediate aftermath. Around 28,000 of those outages were customers of Ozark Border.

That same day, New-Mac dispatched linemen Tobey Powell, Jeremiah Taylor, Billy McGuffey, Matthew Roschevitz, Brandon Bettels, Robert Bunch, Robert Nunley, Ben
Mitchell, Gabe Ellison and Mike Stevens. The New-Mac workers headed that way with a
large two-man bucket truck, two Digger Derricks, two service trucks, and a materials
truck and trailer.

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

They arrived to find ice accumulation the diameter of an aluminum can on the lines. Of course, the Southwest Missouri linemen had seen similar sights in the not too distant past – since 2007 featured the most destructive ice storm the New-Mac service area had ever seen, plus one more ice storm to boot. However, the eastern side of the state features
the soft soil of the Mississippi Delta, and the added weight of the ice on the lines with this
storm was pulling the utility-pole anchors right out of the ground.

“They were tore up bad is all I can say,” said McGuffey, of the Ozark Border territory. After two weeks of labor, Taylor, McGuffey, Nunley and Mitchell returned with three of the vehicles, and in their stead, another batch of New-Mac linemen and vehicles headed east. On Feb. 9, Don Miller, Randy Sutton, Dave Sharp, Tony Harvey, Darren Pierce, Richard VanDorn, Marti Schaack, and Jason Adams took with them two more Digger Derricks, another service truck and a materials truck.

“It was hard work,” said Nunley of the 16-18 hour days spent helping those to the east.
Nunley and McGuffey said, to the best of their count, in one week the New-Mac linemen
changed out between 80 and 90 poles and put up 8 miles – quite a feat considering they made every effort to work from the blacktop as opposed to venturing out into the muddy fields.

The New-Mac crews found a different sort of landscape in southeast Missouri — one with few trees and flat ground unlike anything they see near their homes in southwest Missouri.

According to the New-Mac linemen, it seemed like all rice fields and farm land – few trees and even fewer, if any, rocks. One of the few times, the big yellow, two-man bucket truck actually entered a field, the front end was buried three feet into the sludge. Nunley said he only had to use his chainsaw once, quite an oddity in New-Mac’s experience with ice storms.

Of course, the linemen also experienced some very appreciative folks, happy to be getting their power back. “The people were great,” said McGuffey. “They’d bring you hot coffee, and offer you water, and offer you something to eat.”

The local Lion Clubs even brought them some “home-cooked food” into the field that was “cooked really good,” according to Nunley.

In recent days, thunderstorms have hit the once ice-ravaged area, and progress will be slow as muddy conditions are not improving. Wind gust of up to 60 miles per hour have even caused new outages.

As of Thursday, around 7,100 electric cooperative customers were still without power in Missouri, and Ozark Border had under 900 outages.

Loehr said there’s no timetable on how long the 14 linemen still out east will be there. Maybe in the days ahead, New-Mac might trade out some more, but basically, the linemen will be out there “as long as they need them.”
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Editor's Note: For media inquiries, contact Jim McCarty at 573-680-2451. For information specific to New-Mac Electric Cooperative's response, contact Mark Rakes at 417-850-9210.