I want to take a moment to thank you all for your patience with the widespread outages that were experienced from yesterday’s Halloween snow event. Visiting with our linemen before they headed out this morning, they don’t remember seeing this type of outage in our past. As the rain turned to heavy, wet snow, the outages started to roll in. The weight of that snow started to break trees that fell into our lines. At the same time, it broke poles and transformers and caused our lines to twist together across our entire system, all within a few hours.
I spent yesterday checking with our teams, asking what they needed from me. I always heard, “We got this, but thanks for asking!”. I am proud of their response and efforts.
Our members were naturally disappointed at times but also very understanding, giving grace to our team members that were taking the calls. We know that as time went on and the power was still not on that the patience ran thin, and it started to be heard in the voices on the phones. All of it is understandable.
At the peak yesterday, there were over 1,700 outages across our service territory. It was a daunting task but as of this afternoon, we are working on the last remaining outages to have power back on for all of our members. Once the power is restored, we will continue to work in the weeks ahead on some remaining repairs and maintenance. Again, we thank all of you for your patience, support, and understanding.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank the crews from the City of Chaska, Steele Waseca Co-op, Minnesota Valley Electric, and Kandiyohi Power Cooperative that assisted us over the past two days. We appreciate everyone’s support and patience as we work through the final remaining outages. Updates will continue to be provided through our Facebook page and website.
Ron Meier
