General

Responding to the most destructive storm in OPPD’s history

At some point during the eight-day restoration that followed the most destructive storm in OPPD’s history, Phil Rohan and his line crew encountered a problem.

Hundreds of field workers had already confronted slick roads, blizzard winds, near-zero visibility and slippery mud. Customers wanted their power restored. And now, in the mushy, waterlogged soil, the pole they were installing wouldn’t stand up straight.

So the Blair-based crew got creative. They filled the hole with rocks and three-foot chunks of broken pole to stabilize the soil and create a solid foundation. The fix worked.

“We do what we have to do,” said Rohan, a working line crew leader with 25 years at OPPD. “Our job is to get all customers back on, as quickly and safely as possible. These kinds of storms are really what this job is all about.”

A massive challenge

OPPD field workers and many others faced a massive undertaking in March when an eight-hour-long blizzard raged through eastern Nebraska March 19.

The outage was the fifth-largest OPPD’s history as measured by the number of outages. But the storm was the biggest by far in terms of damage to the utility’s infrastructure.

OPPD replaced 1,524 distribution poles and 71 transmission poles during the restoration. By contrast, during OPPD’s largest-ever outage in July 2024, workers replaced 433 poles after hurricane-force winds devastated the Omaha metro and surrounding areas. Crews worked around the clock until all customers were restored.

“Honestly, this was the largest major event I’ve ever seen at OPPD,” Rohan said. “It was pretty spectacular how OPPD handled this one, in my opinion, and the mutual aid crews we got to work with knew exactly what they were doing.”

The blizzard knocked out power to 106,681 at the outage’s peak, but because OPPD managed to restore some customers while the blizzard was still happening, the total that lost power at some point was closer to 132,000.

OPPD deployed more than 1,000 field workers, including contractors and mutual aid crews, to tackle the job.

‘We just kept finding more’

What they encountered was remarkable.

Dense, heavy ice – 3-5 inches thick in some areas – had accumulated on the lines.

Engineers and meteorologists would later call it a “500-year event.” That means the storm was a weather phenomenon with a 1 in 500 chance of occurring in any given year. Deep snow drifts and slippery roads complicated efforts to fully assess the damage.

As the ice and snow melted, the ground turned slushy and muddy and slick. Strong, gusty winds whipped through the rural fields. With fewer customers per mile, repairs in one area didn’t restore as many people as they would have in the Omaha metro. The work seemed endless.

The night after the storm, Rohan and the two other journeymen on his crew surveyed as much as they could near Blair and North Bend. Back home, without power, their families waited in darkness.

Most damaged poles would need a full rebuild, and unlike shorter neighborhood circuits in Omaha, some rural lines ran 10-20 miles. Mutual aid hadn’t arrived yet. The crew fixed what they could. Rohan drove the circuits all night, scrawling pages of detailed notes about what they’d need when reinforcements arrived.

“We just kept finding more and more,” he said.

A team effort

OPPD’s wires-down team, which tackles smaller jobs and helps individual customers during outages, stripped good, salvageable parts from damaged poles so crews could reuse them. Streetlighters helped clean damage, drove trailers to transport reusable parts to centralized locations and restored lights to minimize any post-storm backlogs.’

OPPD meter technician Randy Waring spent the first few restoration days in the Omaha metro, repairing as many homes as he could on the wires-down team. OPPD clerks kept a steady flow of work on their schedules as they moved from job to job.

“In terms of challenges, the main thing is just staying safe and making sure the customers are safe,” Waring said. “We help whoever we can, as fast as we can, even if it’s just a temporary fix.”

In OPPD’s Energy Control Center, dispatchers coordinated the work, issued instructions to crews and creatively rerouted power from neighboring circuits whenever possible to restore customers. Above all, they made sure everyone stayed safe.

OPPD benefitted from dozens of community partners, as well, including local businesses and government partners. Metropolitan Community College provided 100 utility poles from its Utility Line Technician program to help meet the huge demand for replacements.

Help from suppliers

OPPD’s supply-chain team leveraged its relationships with suppliers, who rushed shipments to Nebraska to provide workers all the parts they needed. The utility contacted vendors while the storm was still happening to let them know crews would likely need extra materials, said Nikole Larson, OPPD’s manager of Supply Chain Management Support Services.

“We try to anticipate what’s happening, and that helped us greatly with the poles,” Larson said.

As the extent of damage became clearer, OPPD’s suppliers provided a steady stream of new poles, crossarms and other components so that restoration work could continue uninterrupted.

Trucks carried poles on a continuous loop between the nearest yard in Kansas City and staging areas near the restoration sites. The pole supplier diverted shipments that were destined for other utilities to help meet OPPD’s more immediate needs.

OPPD’s on-the-ground team included line and splicer crews, troubleshooters, underground construction crews, the wires-down team and equipment operators to run dozers and other machinery. Mutual aid partners arrived from Kansas, Arkansas Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Iowa and Missouri. Everyone set to work.

“All you saw was miles and miles of cables on the ground and poles that were broken, bent or leaning over,” Waring said. “It was really eye-opening to see how much work there was.”

Damage across the district

Click through the photos below to see more photos of storm damage and crews hard at work restoring power.

Behind the scenes

Many others helped in vital but less visible roles.

Technology specialists helped work through software issues. Customer service representatives provided customers with the most up-to-date information available.

Communication technicians restored and rerouted damaged communication lines so OPPD could stay coordinated and assess damage.

Substation workers helped haul materials and equipment. Safety specialists ensured the ongoing safety of everyone involved. Corporate Marketing & Communications staff provided regular public updates via social media, news releases and posts on OPPD’s Storm & Outage webpage. Managers and supervisors provided resources where needed and relayed issues to the storm team.

Customers provided crucial assistance as well, reporting outages in a timely manner and bringing issues to OPPD’s attention.

Always learning

Lessons learned from past storms also helped shape OPPD’s response. One example was OPPD’s damage assessment team, a group of distribution engineers and electrical service designers who ran ahead of line crews to identify what repairs were needed at the next job site.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to engage our resources more efficiently and effectively,” said Brian Kramer, senior director of Utility Operations, Construction and Maintenance. “The damage assessment team worked hand in hand with crews, developing pole and equipment counts so the crews would have the materials they needed.”

OPPD’s support team and staging center in La Vista was a huge help for mutual aid crews. The support team made sure those workers had food, water and snacks and hotel rooms for rest. OPPD employees volunteered to clean used clothing in their home washing machines.

Ensuring a positive experience for mutual aid teams is critical because it helps those workers focus on the job at hand, Kramer said. It also could sway their decision to return if OPPD ever needs their help again.

The utility’s emergency preparedness team worked closely with local and state partners to close roads when needed and provide other key resources.

After the blizzard ended, OPPD kept plugging away with cleanup, post-storm paperwork and logistics. Others returned full-time to the daily maintenance, construction, planning and customer services work necessary to serve customers. OPPD’s power plants kept humming along, generating power for customers in a variety of ways.

As with every storm, OPPD is evaluating all the work done and searching for ways to respond even more efficiently in the future.

“This was a strong team effort,” Kramer said. “OPPD has worked intentionally to create an effective storm response process. We’re also very intentional about continuously improving and learning from our experiences.”