Utility crews continue working to restore power across the state following Wednesday’s blizzard. MidAmerican Energy company spokesman Geoff Greenwood says this was one of the bigger storms to impact the system.
Damaged power pole following the blizzard. (MidAmerican photo)
“I would say our peak was about 33,000 customers. But keep in mind that even as we restored customers, there were others who were losing power. So it was a number that changed every hour,” he says. Addiing in outages before and after the peak, there were more than 60,000 total customers who lost power at some point. Western and northwest Iowa saw the most damage and Greenwood says the Interstate 29 corridor between Sergeant Bluff and Missouri Valley got clobbered.
“There is particularly extensive damage in that area due to this storm. So overnight, we’ve brought in some additional outside crews, and we have sent in a lot of extra equipment and materials as well, because that is going to be a Herculean task to restore our system in that area,” he says. The interstate was shut down for several hours after power lines fell onto the roadway. Greenwood says the changing precipitation as the storm blew through caused problems when combined with the wind.
“The high winds, in addition to the accumulation of ice and heavy wet snow on top of the lines. In some cases, it just weighted it down. But in other cases, the high winds caused the lines to bounce. And they bounced violently, which we call galloping that snapped lines. It took down power poles, and in several cases, they were cascading power poles that went down,” Greenwood says.
Greenwood says they sent line and tree crews out to clear trees and replace the poles. “Overnight, we sent materials to western Iowa. We have inventory throughout our service area, so if we need something moved, we can do that, and we have done that, and we are continuing to send materials and crews that way to address those issues,” he says. Greenwood says they staged in the area before the storm and also called in help from others states.
The storm made it difficult to quickly get to work in some areas. “We had crews that couldn’t get out to where they needed to go because the roads were impassable. We have had some situations where utility trucks were stuck and it took some time for us to be able to access certain areas,” Greenwood says. “And so in some cases, we had to wait till daylight hours to be able to understand and assess what had happened, so we could start making plans to fix it.” He says they have some 600 people working in western Iowa to restore the power there.
MidAmerican was showing some 2,900 customers still without power at noon today.