Work continues to get all the electricity back on in C-R

Workers in Cedar Rapids continue making their way through a tangled mess of wires and trees to get the electricity flowing again after Sunday night’s storms left 35-thousand people without power. Alliant Energy spokesperson Lisha Coffey says they’re making progress. She says the still have about seven thousand customers without power, and she says unfortunately the lower the number goes, the slower the process goes. She says crews are going door-to-door as the trees have wrapped around the lines in people’s back yards. Coffey says they have 160 crew members working to get the power back on. She says they’ve pooled resources from all over the state with crews in from Ottumwa, Newton, Ames and Burlington. She also credits the customers for being patient while the crews untangle and restore the power lines. Coffey says most of the people will hopefully have power back on by tonight. She says they look to have all but a couple hundred back working by the end of the day. She says those couple of hundred will be tough because they’re individuals that have lines down in their back yards. Coffey says it’s been five or six years since they’ve had this much damage. She says it’s probably the worst outage since a snowstorm knocked out power in 1998 or 1997. What’s all the extra work and repair going to cost? Coffey says it’s a little too early to tell what the storm will cost. Coffey says in some cases customers have to call an electrician to replace the power line connection to their home before Alliant crews can turn the power back on.