ILEC Crews Respond To More Than 200 Power Outages During Wednesday’s Blizzard

(Estherville)– Improved conditions this (Thurs.) morning have allowed line crews with Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative to resume their restoration efforts. Spokesman Aaron Ruschy tells KUOO news it just got too dangerous last (Wed.) night to keep crews out there…Ruschy01 

“It was pretty tough last night. We had to pull the crews in. They just couldn’t see, you know, in front of their bumper even. They were driving by looking out the side windows to get back to the shops to get the trucks thawed off.”

Ruschy says the problems started fairly early in the day Wednesday…Ruschy02 

“We started out yesterday with some substation outages so we had some high numbers with the transmission provider feeding our substations. At the peak I don’t have that number right handy but when we went into last night when we called the trucks in we were at about 160 out yet through the night, so we were well over that 200 mark yesterday.”

He says most of the issues were in the eastern and southeastern areas of ILEC’s service territory…Ruschy03 

“It was kind of confined to Pocahontas county and then Dickinson, Emmet and a little bit of Kossuth county. A few outages in Palo Alto but otherwise it was kind of that east and southeast side of our system was heavier. Was that pretty much due to the wind and ice buildup? Yeah it was that ice that began in the morning, that rain was kind of, you know they had talked about that coming through but it stuck a little more than everybody was expecting so we had that coating of ice on the wires and then that wind started whipping it and the conductors started moving and wanting to slap together causing those outages.”

Ruschy says this storm doesn’t rank as high as some in previous years when it comes to damage but he says it is right up there in other aspects…Ruschy04 

“As far as getting around travel was the worse part. The number of people out and damage isn’t quite as bad. The system held together pretty good. It’s just that we couldn’t get to them in a matter of time.”

Ruschy thanks their member-owners for their cooperation and patience in getting service restored.