January 2016
Damages from ice storm Goliath were severe
The December 26-27 storm system that caused power outages throughout SWRE’s service territory was called Goliath – a name that was given to it by the National Weather Service. I don’t think the Christmas Eve storm of 2009 or the January storm of 2010 had names, but the late December storm of 2015 was certainly named appropriately. Its territory and scope of damage was huge.
The 2010 storm destroyed almost 3,000 SWRE poles, but the damage that year was pretty much confined to a two-county area in Oklahoma. In contrast, this December’s Goliath began in the southern Texas counties of our territory and moved northward across our entire system. Every county in our service territory was affected. Transmission from Western Farmers (our power provider) was lost to every substation. Even metering points and back-feed options from AEP/PSO were damaged or not available. In short, every member of SWRE was affected by the storm. Goliath spared no one! In this newsletter we want to chronicle the “life” of the
storm Goliath. We have chosen to present the narrative through the different phases of the storm. We hope to give you the facts and information. These are not excuses, because no one wants excuses if their power is off! However, it is always beneficial to provide information so that our members can understand the process of restoration as much as possible. As this article is being written, the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) emergency phase is just ending. The emergency phase lasts until the final residence receives power. During the emergency phase contractors can be engaged without pre-bidding, although there are qualifications that must be met for a contractor to work for SWRE or for any other cooperative. Once the emergency phase is completed, SWRE must bid the work to restore non-residential accounts like fence chargers, cattle water, irrigation, oil wells, etc. Those bids are based on units completed instead of time worked. These requirements must be met to qualify for FEMA funding. To receive FEMA help, counties and states have threshold levels of damage that must be met to qualify for aid. The thresholds in Texas are very high, so FEMA aid in Texas does not seem probable. Counties in Oklahoma
by Mike R. Hagy
should qualify if state and federal declarations are approved.
Therefore, there is a short delay for those accounts
that require contractors to help our crews restore power. In addition, SWRE will eventually require bids for the massive cleanup of downed poles and materials. In short, our system has sustained a lot of damage. We lost older facilities and we lost brand new facilities as well. The weight of ½- to ¾-inch of ice plus sustained 50-to-60-mile-per-hour winds for two to three days was lethal to our infrastructure! We believe the final count of downed poles will be approximately 1,700-1,750.
Actually that’s about 90
miles of line built in adverse conditions during the storm! Unfortunately, we will see the delayed effects of this damage for weeks and months. Once all facilities have been restored, we will reassess our emergency response plan. Each storm has a life of its own, and Goliath has been the most difficult in our co-op history. Much of our response plan worked very well, but there are always things that could have been done differently or in other ways. We will look to correct mistakes and enhance procedures that worked well. We are in the final stages of the implementation of software for our outage management system, which would have been a tremendous help during this storm. In fact, we are presently working with several of our software providers to develop and implement a new reporting platform based on the experiences we encountered during Goliath. This software will not only result in better identification of damage and locations affected, but will also help remedy many of the communication issues encountered during Goliath. 2015 brought us two tornados and a major windstorm in May and ice storms in November and December. The storms also reminded us how much we depend on electricity. Please accept our apology for the time you were without power and pray that we will make it through the remainder of the winter and coming spring of 2016 without a repeat of 2015!
THANK YOU
On behalf of SWRE employees and all who worked to restore power, THANK YOU to co-op members who brought food or sent messages of encouragement and appreciation. Your expressions of support and thoughtfulness mean a lot to us and are much appreciated.
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