On Saturday, July 1, 2023, the city of West Plains was hit with a storm that produced golf ball-size hail and knocked power out for roughly half of the city.
Community Services Director with the City of West Plains, Todd Shanks, gave a recap of damage dealt to the city and the amount of work city crews put in to get the power back on:
From the storm damage this weekend:
– 2,600 meters were out of service.
– Two substations went down.
– The 69 kVa transmission line down at Bratton Ave.
– There were several lines down around town from limbs and trees.
– Worcester St. had a large limb that took out the three-phase line and damaged four poles.
– A pole behind the sheriff’s station and a pole on Myrtle St. were knocked down.
– The service at several houses had to be cut due to damages.
The City of West Plains posted the following on social media:
“We isolated the damaged 69 kVa transmission line, then reenergized the two substations’ transformers. Crews then started checking circuits out of the substations before reenergizing them, this allowed us to start reenergizing circuits safely. While crews repaired poles and lines, we were also moving areas of town that were not damaged over to other circuits, in order to restore power to those who were down. 10 hours after the substations went down, we had most power restored and isolated the remaining outage to Bratton Ave.”
“Crews started working on clearing the road on Bratton Ave, we had two 65 feet transmission poles down with three-phase under the transmission line. Crews had to auger new holes for each pole and started standing setting the new 70 feet tall poles. Crews then started framing the transmission poles and repairing the distribution primary on the poles, then we focused on the transmission line repair. During this we were still getting calls about other areas that didn’t have power or limbs on lines that crews had to check. Once the transmission and distribution lines had been repaired, we reenergized the 69 kVa lines and distribution lines. We moved all circuits back to the original substation to balance the system and help the stations.”
The electric department had a total of 11 employees who worked up to 30 hours to restore power to the City of West Plains. Some of the electric crews are replacing poles today that had damage but didn’t affect the electric system.
“We would like to say thank you to the street department for helping with tree removal and the planning department for helping with damage to services working with the owners. We would also like to thank Howell-Oregon Electric for getting us some number 4 copper to help with the repairs to the transmission line.”
