Our offices are closed so all efforts can be put toward emergency power restoration.

44,226 of our members have been affected by this storm. 16,257 have been put back on. I know that if you aren't one of them, it doesn't really make you feel any warmer. But please know we are doing our best and will continue to work as long as it takes. We called for help before this storm and have twice as many guys here working to restore power. You may see yellow or orange trucks and know our trucks are white or you may see white trucks with different names on them but they can still be working on our lines.

Please be safe and assume every power line is live!

We cannot give an estimate of when power will be back on because every outage is different. Please call 888-239-2300. If it is busy, keep calling. People are getting thru.

This is a little information about how the restoration process goes. The damage repair challenge for power systems can vary widely by type of weather situation, type of damage caused, and the individual situation at the specific repair. This is a general example, for illustration purposes only, of a scenario of line repair in an ice storm.

 Consider a situation where multiple spans are damaged. A span is a length of conductor wire between two poles.

1.     The weight of ice on trees or the wire itself breaks the wire and/or poles.

2.     The tension on the wire as it breaks may pull it the distance of two or more poles - the length of a football field for each span of wire between two poles - 300 feet.

3.     The repair crew arrives. It may be a bucket truck or it may be lineworkers who are climbing the poles with gaffs (an apparatus worn on the lower leg).

4.     If a pole or poles have been broken, simply removing the 400-pound broken pole, re-digging a hole, and setting a new pole can take as much as 45 minutes per pole.

5.     The ice must be broken off the wire for the entire span being repaired.

6.     The line workers must pull the broken wire back into place.

7.     A new span of wire is put in place and connections between existing and new wire spans are made.

8.     The wire is connected to the pole-top transformers.

9.     The service wires (that go from pole to home or business) must be re-strung and connected.

10.  The line must be re-energized by manually closing the circuit in the field (at the fuse, main line or substation).

 This time-consuming and multi-part process can add up to many hours for only a few spans of wire. Then in a frustrating and not uncommon turn of events in an icing situation, another section of that same power line can later break because of the weight of ice on nearby lines or trees.