Cambridge, Nebraska--Mother nature once again gives our area a surprise, but this time more devastation resulted. It was a tail of two areas for Twin Valleys Public Power District—the western side of our district was rain and then snow, and the eastern side was rain and then ice. Unfortunately, the ice caused more problems then everyone wanted.
The worst part of the problem was that NPPD, Nebraska Public Power District, also sustained damage to their transmission lines. This resulted in no power coming into the district where the ice was the worst. This resulted in some communities being without power for a couple of days. Even though NPPD still did not have power restored Twin Valleys Public Power District was able to reroute power from the western portion of our district to the eastern portion that was without power. This took a couple of days to get accomplished but our substations and communities got power sooner than expected.
Twin Valleys Public Power District suffered an enormous amount of damage to our lines and poles and its going to take weeks before everything is repaired. Our first goal is to get power back to everyone. As of Tuesday, January 2nd there were 29 extra men helping our lineman in the effort to get the power restored to our customers. We also have larger electrical line construction crews that will be here later this week to help.
This storm produced the type of ice we don’t see in this area very often, especially in late December. The damage has been immense. Twin Valleys Public Power District does not have a count on the number of poles that have been broken, but it is the worst we have had since the spring snow storm of 1994.
The patience of our customers has been appreciated. Our goal is to get power restored to everyone first and then finish the pole repairs. Unfortunately, this is a slow process when our crews have to drive and work on the ice.
