Energy news from Omaha Public Power District
Energy news from Omaha Public Power District
Mutual aid showcases the spirit of public power
OPPD belongs to the Public Power Mutual Aid Network. In the past, OPPD has sent crews to locations as far as New York City, Louisiana and Mississippi to help restore power to strangers.
OPPD previously received aid after a June 2008 windstorm. Shortly after the storm hit on June 16, 2017, OPPD requested mutual aid.
The storm was the fourth-most damaging storm in the utility’s history in terms of outages. At its peak, 76,500 customers were without power. Shortly after the storm hit, OPPD activated its storm team and declared a Level 2 storm. Th damage was widespread over the 5,000-square-mile service area, causing 57 distribution circuit lockouts and 12 transmission circuit lockouts.
Crews from Nebraska, Iowa and as far away as Alabama responded to help OPPD restore power after two tornadoes caused millions of dollars in damage. The storm hit Bellevue especially hard.
The Public Power Mutual Aid Network has 952 members ready to lend assistance across jurisdictional boundaries following widespread power outages.
Jason Kuiper joined OPPD as a communications specialist in 2015. He is a former staff writer and reporter at the Omaha World-Herald, where he covered a wide range of topics but spent the majority of his career covering crime. He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha and has also appeared in several true crime documentary shows. In his free time he enjoys cooking, spending time with his wife and three children, and reading crime novels.
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