It's been nearly a decade since the last major ice storm hit Mid-Missouri, and area utility company officials said lessons learned from that storm will help as they prepare for the ice storm forecast this weekend.
"That storm was a baptism by fire for us," said Mark Boyer, spokesman for Three Rivers Electric Cooperative. "Probably the biggest lesson we learned was to have a crisis plan, which we do have now.
The extent of the damage was amazing, so after that storm our statewide cooperative association came up with a mutual aid program - and what that means is if we have a cooperative or cooperatives that have problems and others don't, then we call around the state and find co-ops who can send crews that can help the co-ops that need help."
Missouri will call on other states for assistance to get members affected by the storm back online as soon as possible, Boyer said.
"Every electric cooperative follows a basic principle when it comes to restoring power: priority goes to the lines that will get the most people back in service the quickest," said Jim McCarty, Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives spokesman. "That means getting transmission lines repaired so that substations are energized, then working outward to the feeder lines and then finally the taps to individual homes."
Ameren Missouri, the other major electric provider for the Jefferson City area, announced Wednesday it will activate its emergency operations center. The company has also sent out an inquiry for mutual assistance to other utilities in case additional crews are needed.
Boyer said Three Rivers has been pushing an aggressive right-of-way clearing plan since the storm a decade ago.
"That storm taught us the lesson that we needed to be clearing more," he said. "We keep a 15-foot path on either side of the power lines and a 30-foot right-of-way. We've done a lot of work with Hentges Tree Service to look at what types of trees that might be weak and need to come down. We have over 4,000 miles of overhead lines. We can't wait until something happens, and we need to be proactive instead of reactive."
Ameren officials said they also were loading and preparing to deploy storm trailers filled with materials field crews need to perform service restoration work. Like mobile warehouses, the trailers can be moved to various staging sites to provide materials close to impacted areas.
During the 2007 storm, Boyer said, the ice built up to about 1-inch thick on the power lines.
"That's a lot of extra weight, and that's when poles snap," he said. "We would do the basic repairs then go back to make the permanent repairs just to get customers back online as soon as possible."
Missouri's Electric Cooperatives maintain a website, bestormsmart.com, that lists items to assemble in case of long outages. It also lists general safety tips, like properly hooking up generators.
"They should have double-throw switches to keep from putting the power back on the lines," he said. "I tell people all the time: when there is an outage, keep everything closed so it takes longer to go bad. In 2007, it took two days for it to go below 50 in our house."
Boyer noted, compared to 2007, temperatures following this storm are forecast to rebound more quickly, which would speed up repair efforts.
Utility resources online:
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Three Rivers Electric Cooperatve
Three Rivers Electric on Facebook
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Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives (statewide coop updates)
Weather resources:
Mid-Missouri forecast, radar, advisories
MoDOT traveler information map