Power restored throughout Cass County

by Kevin Smith
Pharos-Tribune staff writer

December 23, 2008 11:18 am

— Four days on, electricity was finally restored to 15 homes in northern Cass County following Friday’s ice storm.
David Dewitt lost power at his home on 900N near Lucerne early on Friday morning. Facing a weekend of no heat or electricity, Dewitt, his wife and two-year-old granddaughter spent the weekend close by at Dewitt’s parents’ house until power was finally restored to their home at 7:15 p.m. on Sunday night.
The family returned home on Monday
“REMC did a wonderful job last night,” Dewitt said. “They got here at 6:15 p.m. and the power was back on by 7:15 p.m. You couldn’t have paid me to go up there and do it because it was nothing but miserable weather.”
A fallen utility pole at a house farther down the street cut off electricity to Dewitt’s and two other homes in the area.
He also had a flue fire at the property on Friday, but suffered no long-term damage.
Elsewhere much of the damage was caused by tree limbs breaking under the weight of ice accumulation. Mike McCartney’s home on Van Buren Street narrowly escaped damage from the falling branches of a tree.
McCartney said that he moved his truck during the night because he feared that it may be damaged by the tree limbs breaking. In the morning he found a large branch in the space where his truck had been parked.
“We heard cracking of tree branches all night long,” McCartney said. “We were very fortunate that nobody was hurt and the house wasn’t damaged.”
Alvin Beckman, director of the Cass County Emergency Management Agency, said the storm was hardest on trees.
“I have seen tree limbs on roofs of houses and sheds,” Beckman said. “Trees have also come down on fences, but I don’t think there has been a lot of damage to personal property. The biggest damage has been to the infrastructure of power companies.”
Beckman estimated that around 15,000 homes, or two thirds of the county, went without power at various times on Friday, but work by utility companies to fix damaged power lines gradually restored electricity to the worst hit areas over the weekend
“This is the worst ice storm that I have seen,” Beckman said. “We had another in the early ’90s, but this was worse for the number of outages.”
Cass County Highway Superintendent Steve Easley said that all roads were clear and the department would continue to work on clean up operations during the week when temperatures picked up again.
“I am not going to send people to chop up trees in the kind of weather we have now when the wind chill is 30 degrees below zero,” Easley said Monday. “Our priority has been to clear any immediate danger to the roadways. I know the guys wear all the cold weather gear, but it does not take them long to feel the temperatures when it is this cold.”
Easley added that given the circumstances the response plan used by the department worked well.
“I really think that all in all we were as prepared as we could have been,” he said. “Each crew member worked a 12-hour shift on Friday. The major issue of the day was to get branches and trees out of the roadways. This took up the majority of our workers’ time, and I don’t know what else we could have done.”
Beckman said there were areas in which his department could improve after Friday’s experience.
“One of the things that we have still got to resolve is the issue at the EMA building with generators not working,” he said. “We also have to have better communication lines when we have massive outages like we did on Friday so we know exactly what areas are without power.”
Both Easley and Beckman say they are preparing for another potent storm forecast to hit the area beginning this afternoon and into Wednesday morning.
The National Weather Service reports that the system could lead to heavy snow and significant icing throughout the region. Precipitation is predicted to start as snow and mix with freezing rain late in the afternoon, possibly leading to ice accumulation from a quarter to half an inch.
Easley said his staff would be ready.
“We’re going to a modified work schedule,” he said. “We are in a position to take care of any major problems.”
He added that the department would use salt and sand sparingly because it has a limited effect when temperatures are so cold.
“We have to use salt and sand cautiously,” he said. “It’s only the second day of winter. There is a limit on what we’re going to use and the guys use common sense. They know where the hot spots are and they apply salt there. A truck contains around six to seven tons of salt and sand mix. If we used salt and sand on every inch of every road we would have not a lot of salt left at all. We have to make sure we use discretion.”
Easley was still hopeful that the storm would not be as bad as forecast.
“I hope we don’t have another ice and slush event,” Easley said. “We would much rather be pushing snow than pushing slush and ice. I know everybody wants a white Christmas, but if we could limit it to less than two inches, that would really help us out.”
Like many in the area, Zach Zimmerman’s home in the Broad Ripple Addition east of Logansport was without power until Friday evening.
Zimmerman said he would be prepared if a similar storm hits in the next few days, and he loses power again.
“I’ve got the generator set up so it should be able to supply power to our furnace,” he said. “They’re saying one to three inches of snow and half an inch of ice. I don’t know if it’s going to be a merry Christmas with that on the way.”
Kevin Smith can be contacted at (574) 732-5148 or via e-mail at kevin.smith@pharostribune.com

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