Several conversations were taking place at the same time between operations supervisors, engineers, even media relations people. Calls were coming in over the speakers and through phone lines. Crews of lineworkers were in the field before dawn trying to re-route major power sources so towns and cities would wake up to bright, warm homes. It was early in the outage, and emergency procedures kicked into place. At this time no one could really understand the devastating amount of damage to our system, and how long the repairs would take to make.
Every outage is handled the same way, and with the same urgency.
Phone calls are placed, employees are contacted and system repairs usually correct the problem quickly, but this storm would prove to be a very different experience for those of us new to the cooperative world. Many employees had already put in an entire day worth of work when customers throughout our territory started calling. Once we had committed crews to work on re-routing power around dangerously damaged lines, we realized the system had no power. Transmission lines bring power from the power plants across long stretches of land. The lines are carried on huge towers covering thousands of miles of countryside.