restoration Archives

Mutual aid

Many utilities participate in mutual aid agreements, helping customers get their power back on when natural disasters strike.

A thunderstorm earlier this week brought heavy rain and high winds to the area. Both meant challenging conditions for crews.

System operations specialist is eyes and ears on the system for crews in the field, and is keen to give customers good service.

Last year, OPPD’s service area was hit with one of the most devastating storms in the utility’s history in terms of damage.

OPPD’s final recovery efforts from the devastating June 2017 storm – two damaged transmission lines – will be finished in May.

These OPPD personnel are always on the lookout for problems and calling in larger crews when bigger repairs are needed.

There are steps customers can to minimize outage impacts if one should occur, including how to report the outage to OPPD.

When the lights go out, so do they. Line workers leave the comforts of their homes and families to deal with blizzards, outages.

Communicators knew the utility’s Storm & Outage Center hadn’t been truly tested. That all changed with June 16, 2017, storm.

From the hours of overtime put in by workers to the number of damaged circuits, here is the October 1997 storm by the numbers.