General

On the front lines of a historic outage

Days after hurricane-force winds ripped through eastern Nebraska and caused the largest power outage in OPPD’s history, Alex Prine rolled into an old neighborhood near downtown Gretna.

The OPPD meter technician had already responded to outage calls in north Omaha, Benson and Millard and seen remarkable damage. Trees on houses. Power lines buried in a tangled mess of fallen trees. Splintered electrical poles with transformers and wires still attached.

As soon as he and his partner reported to Gretna to help clear debris and restore power, neighbors swarmed them with questions about the restoration.

“It’s not out of the ordinary, and most of the time we have pretty good interactions,” said Prine, who lost power himself during the storm. “People are rightfully concerned and frustrated, but generally they’re pretty cool. I tell them I’m going to do my best to get them back on.”

The type of damage from the July 31 storm was pretty typical for Nebraska, but the sheer extent and number of outages – about 221,000 at the peak — was far greater than anything seen before.

Just as unprecedented was the response, with more than 1,500 workers in the field including OPPD employees, tree contractors and outside mutual aid crews from as far as Wisconsin and Ohio.

Damage everywhere

Trees and power poles were toppled, blocking easy access for repairs and leaving a dangerous mess on the ground.

Some yards were cramped, overgrown and inaccessible to trucks, forcing crews to unload gear from trucks and carry it in. Instead of bucket trucks, some line crews climbed poles themselves to reach damaged areas.

“It’s the most damage I’ve seen in Nebraska in one area, for sure,” said Mike McLaughlin, a Nebraska Public Power District supervisor who helped lead a mutual aid team.

OPPD Working Line Crew Leader Steve Weaver said the destruction was so extensive that, over the course of the restoration, line crews inspected every single mile of overhead electrical wire in Douglas County. Crews made a hard, prolonged initial push to restore power immediately after the storm, followed by rest while some backup workers stepped in to help. Line crews returned several hours later and began 16-hour shifts.

OPPD dispatchers were “johnny on the spot” with new restoration jobs for crews, Weaver said. That kept crews’ work flowing smoothly and minimized down time between jobs. Dispatchers assign jobs to crews and help oversee the work done in the field.

“We’ve learned from a lot of these major storms, and we’ve gotten more efficient,” he said.

Prioritizing safety

After clearing and inspecting power lines and ensuring the public was safe, Weaver said crews asked OPPD dispatchers to try energizing circuits remotely from the dispatch office. If that didn’t fully restore lines, the crews kept inspecting and narrowing down areas of damage. The challenge was greater in heavily treed areas.

“We have a job to protect the public and make sure the wires are in the air,” Weaver said. “People don’t always understand the time it takes to walk those circuits when there’s so much damage. We have to do it so that nobody gets injured.”

As restoration work progressed, some circuits continued to lock out and cause new outages. Some outages were related to the storm, such as weakened branches falling on power lines, but others weren’t.

The storm was the latest and most widespread in a summer string of major outages, including the tornado that ripped struck Elkhorn and Bennington in April. OPPD Troubleshooter Eric Roxburgh said the storm season was busy, but workers are well-trained to handle it.

“It was awesome how everybody came together, with all the storms we had this summer,” he said. “From the top down, everyone worked together.”

A team effort

Weaver credited dispatchers, field supervisors and many others for supporting restoration work and keeping OPPD workers coordinated.

“Every work group seemed to gel,” he said. “It worked really well.”

Weaver, a nearly 25-year OPPD veteran, recalled storms from the past when technology and OPPD’s coordination weren’t as sophisticated. During a major 1997 winter outage, crews used paper maps to patrol circuits and communicated via pay phones and truck radios.

“That’s what public power’s all about: helping the customer and helping each other.”

Outage response technology is expected to improve even more with the rise of GIS (geographical information system) tracking and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), which will help pinpoint outages with greater accuracy and increase efficiency.

The work for field employees continues well after everyone’s power is restored, Weaver said. Routine, non-storm work tends to back up during restorations, and some temporary storm repairs need longer-term fixes. He said he was proud of everyone’s work.

“OPPD in general came together to overcome all of this,” Weaver said. “We’re Omaha strong, we’re OPPD strong.”

‘The worst one I’ve encountered’

Mutual aid crews and tree-trimming contractors provided a huge boost as well to the restoration work. Several said the damage in Omaha was the most extreme they’d ever seen.

“I’ve been on a few storm jobs for OPPD and this is the worst one I’ve encountered by far,” said Cameron Knopik, an Albion-based journeyman line technician with Loup Public Power.

Crews powered through intense heat for the restoration, but the satisfaction of restoring electrical service was worth it, Knopik said.

“We love coming out and helping the community get the power back on,” he said. “When we get done with a job and we get to throw the fuse in and we see people thanking us, waving, that’s huge.”

Ingenuity at work

Steve Wilhusen, a Hastings-based crew foreman for Southern Public Power, said the situation forced his crew to think creatively.

In one case, the crew repaired a broken pole by bolting two wooden crossarms to the sides as a kind of makeshift splint to hold the pole together until OPPD could fix it permanently. Doing so allowed OPPD to restore power to nearby customers faster and move on to the next job.

The crew worked in difficult, tight spaces in Omaha neighborhoods that bucket trucks couldn’t always access, Wilhusen said.

“It takes a lot of manpower to haul all your stuff clear into a backyard and then change a pole out or put wire up and get people on poles,” he said.

For John Faust, a line crew foreman at MidAmerican Energy in Council Bluffs, the mutual aid work was personal. Two of his sisters live in Omaha and lost power during the outage. Faust said OPPD’s contractor tree crews responded quickly and cleared the way so crews could work.

“Trees, I’d say, were the biggest factor,” he said. “If anything, it just slowed us down a bit.”

OPPD helped facilitate the mutual aid work behind the scenes, providing food and a staging area and getting all the necessary materials and clearances to crews that needed them.

Equally challenging was the damage severity. Many crews discovered that conditions at outage sites were often far worse than initially believed. Mutual aid crews also needed time to familiarize themselves with the circuits. OPPD provided them with “bird dogs,” employees who are familiar with the utility’s protocols as well as the affected neighborhood circuits.

Responding to the call

Like other OPPD field workers, Prine lost power himself during the storm.

His family left for a relative’s house while he stayed behind, working 16-hour shifts and returning to a sweltering home each night to get some sleep.

The sheer number of storms this year was tough, and field workers are still catching up, Prine said. But helping others is worth it.

“It just comes with the territory,” he said.

For McLaughlin, the NPPD supervisor, assisting other utilities is part of the mission.

“It’s absolutely what we do,” McLaughlin said. “That’s what public power’s all about: Helping the customer and helping each other.”