PUNCHED IN THE MOUTH

On the evening of July 17, 2006, the Cherryland Electric Cooperative (CEC) service area, up, down and across, was hit with what one local weatherman called the biggest wind storm in over 20 years. The national weather service estimated wind speeds between 60 and 70 miles per hour.

At CEC, we take pride in our reliability numbers and this storm simply punched us hard in the mouth. We did not go down but the knees got weak as we discovered more than 16,000 members without power after the initial hit. We quickly shook off the blow, called in employees and started to fight back. When the sun rose on the 18th, we were at 9,000 and yet another sunrise later, there were only 1,000 members to go. The final 200 or so were restored on the 20th.

I cannot say enough about your employees at CEC. The storm hit after hours and every employee called responded very quickly. We have had smaller storms in my time here, some going through the night but we had yet to go through a second and third night. One can imagine being backed into a corner and having people step up but until it really happens, you just never know for sure. Go forward, there is no question we have a group of employees who can “get it done” no matter how big or long the battle will be. Smacked in the mouth, they came together and fought back as a team. It was special to be a small part of it. What made it even more so was the fact that nobody thought they were doing anything special at the time. It was simply “what we do”.

We also had great help from our neighbors. Traverse City Light and Power responded as did a crew from Alger Delta Cooperative in Gladstone, Michigan. Local contractors, CC Power and SKF Contracting, were instrumental in providing assistance to maintain an around the clock work force as much as was safely possible. All this help allowed us to double our normal forces and greatly reduce the time involved in restoration. My grandfather always said that in bad times, you need good neighbors. I now know how well our neighbors can be counted on.

Most importantly, I need to give a great deal of thanks to the members who were without power during this storm and the days that followed. We did get a few calls of complaint but we received 10 times more calls, notes, in-person comments and emails of support and understanding. Members saw the damage outside their windows, understood what we were dealing with and gave us support not often seen in today’s “what have you done for me lately” world.

Now, let’s look at the top 3 most often asked questions we get during an outage:

1. When will my power be back on? – This is absolutely the toughest question to answer. We often don’t know the full extent of the damage until crews begin working and even then broken poles and trees can be found around each corner that add time to the repair. Other times we aren’t able to estimate when a crew will be done in one area so they can move on to another. If we had one crew and one outage, a completion time would be an easy calculation. When outages and crews are widespread, it becomes nearly impossible.
2. The line is down. Can I touch it? – Like a mother to a small child, “NO, NO, NO.” It is never safe to grab a downed power line or even the tree it may be wrapped around. All downed lines should be considered live until cooperative personnel tell you otherwise. The line could be re-energized at any time or your neighbor could be running a generator that is sending current out on the line. Nothing bad happens if you stay away and several bad things may happen if you do not.
3. A cooperative truck just drove by but I still don’t have power. Why? – In some cases, it is an employee who is patrolling the line and writing down repair issues for the line crew somewhere behind them. This allows us to prioritize and pre-plan restoration efforts. In other cases, in all honesty, construction crews may be passing you by to fix a larger outage. One of the toughest decisions we are forced to make is driving by a line with 2-3 homes out to get to a substation that serves a few thousand. The most efficient system in a large outage is to start at the substation, go down the main line, then the extensions off the main line before getting to the individual outages.

In closing, the experience left me with a greater appreciation for those I work with and for those we serve. So, the old saying about a silver lining in every cloud even applies to a punch in the mouth!