Ice Storm

We fared well during the recent two storms. I want to brag about the Electric Crew. The worked all night Tuesday, got a little sleep Wednesday morning and went back at it. They did a fantastic job.

One thing I particularly want to point out is the triage approach to their work. The office staff took phone calls from residents about where lines were down and services were lost. Gary Andrews took the calls from the office and checked them out to prioritize the work of the guys on the crew. It worked great. Mike, Jason, Todd, Randy, and Joe made a number of folks happy throughout the night.

We had two outages that cut service to Hillsboro. Tuesday morning, a 15 year old patch failed under the weight of the ice. Tuesday night, the Westar substation lost power due to a burning switch. The high amount of electric load going through the switch with no where to go as power lines in the country were falling contributed to the fire. Westar had to do a temporary patch to restore power about 1:30 AM. Again, as the power was restored, the crew drove each primary line to see there were no fires as a result of turning on the individual feeds. It was very important work that was unnoticed by us.

Key to the survival of our system was the tree trimming we did earlier this fall. We caught a bunch of grief for our tree trimming but the work paid off. We did not lose power as a result of trees. Now, there were a number of residents that were not so lucky. We had over 50 houses that we had to reconnect after repairs were made due to tree limbs falling on the secondary services.

I hope folks take note of the fact that due to the tree trimming, we all had power. Again, very forward thinking and action kept us in power.

Thanks Guys!