The blizzard this week saw thousands of people left without electricity and triggered a big response from the state’s largest utility company.
MidAmerican Energy spokesman Geoff Greenwood says they had some 97 utility crews and another 61 tree crews who responded.”When we have such a large response, it’s kind of an orchestra, and we do have a conductor who is overseeing all of the operations, but then we have people in the field as well who are coordinating with our control center,” Greenwood says.
He says they also have field coordinators who help get crews in place. “Making sure that they’re at the right location, making sure that lines are not energized so we can work safely on those lines, and then making sure that they’ve got the right equipment and personnel,” he says. “And then once we get that repair, we coordinate back with the control room to let them know that circuit is okay to turn back on again, and then that’s what the control room coordinates as well.”
Greenwood says the crews work long hours in tough situations, so it’s important to get them in the right place. We are also making sure that they are getting breaks and that they’re getting food water and rest and just making sure that everybody is working safely and is okay,” he says. Greenwood says they brought in several crews from other states to help with this response. “In situations where we have crews coming in from outside of our service area, we are making sure that they are briefed on the situation, that they know where to go and what needs to be assessed and repaired, and then we’re making sure that they have adequate food and water resources and that they’ve also got a place to sleep,” Greenwood says. He says crews from Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Nebraska, and Wisconsin came to Iowa to help with this storm.
MidAmerican brought in large generators to provide power to Little Sioux, Pisgah, Mondamin and Blencoe today as the repair continue to restore power to those towns. There were some 60,000 power outages from the storm and they were down to around 800 this afternoon.