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February 2010 Storm Summary
Friday, February 5th
The day started like any Friday
with a buzz about the snow coming and Super Bowl Sunday. In anticipation of the Winter Storm Watch many kids were home from school. Around noon, a heavy snow began to fall, and fall, and fall. The combination of wet snow and temperatures caused snow to stick to everything, including trees and electric wires.
By 9:00 P.M. all linemen were called back to work as the Cooperative was in for a “bumpy ride”.
Saturday, February 6th
Southeast Ohio woke up to about 28 degrees and 10 inches of wet, but drifting snow, and unfortunately about 5400 meters were without electricity.
The Cooperative was under full storm restoration, and General Manager Garry Mbiad was making calls to bring in additional crews, from in and out of Ohio. The Mt. Sterling and Salt Fork Substations were both out, along with over 100 line outages. Line outages can serve from one member to several hundred, each requiring a crew to make a repair which can last from 30 minutes to an entire day per line.
Saturday evening the first extra crew from Mid-Ohio Electric Cooperative in Kenton, Ohio arrived and was quickly dispatched to help Guernsey crews with what would become a record storm.
Around 9:00 P.M., when many employees had worked 24 hours, it was time to get some rest. Others who were rested, continued through the night.
Sunday, February 7th
The morning was colder, about 10 degrees,
most linemen returned to their trucks at 6:00 A.M. knowing they had an 18 hour day of walking through heavy snow, dragging tools and working to keep trucks from “getting stuck”. They passed the other linemen who had worked during the night in the garage on their way home for some sleep before starting the process all over again. 4400 homes were dark, and members were patiently waiting. The office was a buzz, other Guernsey employees were answering phones, gathering food and drink, ensuring hotels and meals would be available for the invited guest linemen.
Between noon and 3:00 P.M., 8 more crews which consisted of 16 linemen were added to the efforts. The crews came from the following sources: Consolidated Electric Cooperative from Delaware, Ohio, Union Rural Electric Cooperative from Marysville, Ohio, Northeastern Indiana Electric Cooperative from Indiana, and Pike Electric from Tennessee.
By 4:00 P.M., the snow finally stopped falling, but much work was left to get the remaining 3645 members “back in power”. Fortunately, repairs were made to re-energize the Salt Fork Substation.
Monday, February 8th
Monday morning was a mix of good news… AEP replaced a broken transmission pole which had de-energized the Mt. Sterling Substation. It was now back online. Extra crews were in place to work: more were coming; progress was happening.
For the bad news…temperatures hovered around zero, 2155 still could not turn on a light, and the National Weather Service issued another winter storm warning for Tuesday.
Two more crews joined in the effort Monday, another from Northeastern Indiana and Firelands Rural Electric Cooperative from New London, Ohio. The phones were ringing steady with mostly pleasant voices, making certain their outage was in the computer. A few other calls, which were not so pleasant, but understandable, as homes were freezing, frustration was building, not personal, just frustrated with a course of unfortunate events, and no idea when full power would be restored. In the afternoon, two additional substations (Antrim and Senecaville) went down due to transmission feed issues. AEP, the transmission line carrier, was on the site and able to restore the transmission line in just a few hours. 2052 members were still in the dark.
Click to view a storm damage slideshow
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