City, CU begin recovery

That’s Springfield Mayor Tom Carlson’s take on the ice storm that hit Missouri, along with sections of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas, Jan. 12–14.

Initial estimates from the National Weather Service in Springfield had the city buried under an inch and a half of ice; areas to the west received an additional 3 to 5 inches of snow and sleet.

At one point, 75,000 City Utilities customers were without power – a large portion of the nearly 300,000 across the state that were in the dark.

Though the number of Springfield residents without power has dropped significantly – down to 20,000 as of the morning of Jan. 18 – getting everyone back up and running could take several more days, even with more than 250 crews, from areas as far as Indiana, North Carolina and Louisiana, working around the clock. CU has 10 electric line crews; the rest are contracted through other utility companies, though CU officials did not have an estimate of that cost.

CU spokesman Ern DeCamp said the process of restoring power begins at the substations.

“Then we repair the feeder circuits coming out of the substation,” DeCamp said. “After we get some good progress there, we start working on the lateral lines off of those main feeder lines, and those laterals are probably what most of us are fed off of.”

All of the feeder lines have now been repaired. Each one, according to CU officials, supplies about 1,000 customers.

The last step in the process is fixing the service lines from the utility pole to the house – a step, DeCamp reminds customers, that can’t be done if the home’s weatherhead is damaged or broken.

The cost of repairing or replacing a weatherhead – the piping on rooftops where electric services enters the home – ranges from $200 to $600.

The cleanup

“This is going to be a very expensive process to clean up, and it’s not going to be done overnight,” Mayor Carlson said. “Before our city looks like we want it to look, it could be a matter of weeks or a matter of months.”

Springfield Public Works Director Marc Thornsberry said debris collection at residences may not begin until early February – after the normal bidding process to find independent contractors.

Thornsberry said cleanup work could last until June 1.

Cleanup costs – for which officials would not offer estimates – will be defrayed by help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA declared 34 Missouri counties as disaster areas, and city officials are expecting a large chunk of federal assistance for public debris removal. FEMA assistance will not, however, reimburse private businesses or individuals for the costs of generators or damage repair.

Joplin-based Empire District Electric is in a similar situation; at one point, 85,000 customers were without power for the utility, which supplies electricity to customers in 16 Missouri counties, including Greene, Christian, Dallas, Polk, Dade and Lawrence.

As of Jan. 18, the utility still had about 29,000 customers in the dark as more than 1,000 extra repair personnel assisted in the recovery efforts.

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