(Lake Park)—While most of eastern Dickinson county has so far escaped the brunt of an ice storm, that isn’t the case for about the western third of the county. Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret tells KUOO news the hardest hit area appears to be in and around Lake Park…(click here for comment.) “There was some ice yesterday in Spirit Lake and Milford and that area, but last evening the temperature warmed up above freezing and a lot of that melted off. That wasn’t the case though over in the western third of the county and Lake Park. A lot of ice still on trees and power lines and that sort of thing over here…upwards of a third of an inch or better on everything over here. Lake Park Utilities was out most of the night fixing power lines and street crews are out this morning picking up branches and tree limbs and things like that that are down all over town. So I’d say as far as the county is concerned the western third and especially Lake Park took the brunt of this storm.”
Ehret adds there were still a few residents in that part of the county without power as of this (Wed.) morning…(click here for comment.) “As far as Iowa Lakes Electric goes they’re showing just two customers. That’s probably due to a line that’s down just south of Lake Park. I believe Alliant was showing maybe a dozen or two customers out. A lot of it’s just sporadic, isolated outages. Nothing widespread that I’m aware of in our county.”
Ehret offers this advice with the likelihood of even more freezing rain and snow in the forecast…(click here for comment.) “If you have a back up heat source or if you have a generator make sure that thing is ready to go because we could be potentially seeing another couple of tenths of ice today and then several inches of snow tonight and tomorrow according to the latest forecast so just be aware of that and, you know, if you’re in an area where there’s a lot of ice watch out for tree branches that might be coming down. Fortunately right now the wind’s not too bad but if it comes back up we’re going to start having problems again with power lines coming down, tree branches coming down. And of course like always if you see downed power lines stay away from it. Don’t go near it and let the power company know if you know who’s it is or call the Communications Center.”
Ehret says in the event you do experience a power outage, that you should contact your provider.
As of now, Ehret says he isn’t aware of any structural damage related to the storm.
