Crews working to restore power in rural areas near Jamestown - Jamestown Sun

Crews working to restore power in rural areas near Jamestown - Jamestown Sun | News, weather, sports from Jamestown North Dakota

Crews working to restore power in rural areas near Jamestown

Northern Plains Electric and Dakota Valley Electric cooperatives have called in additional crews.

JAMESTOWN — About 2,400 homes and businesses remain without electricity in the Jamestown region as of 10 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 28. The ice storm first struck the area on Christmas Day, causing outages in the service area of Northern Plains Electric Cooperative and Dakota Valley Electric Cooperative.

The cooperatives have called in additional crews to restore services but in the worst-case scenarios, power won’t be restored until next week, said Mark Kinzler, general manager for Dakota Valley Electric Cooperative.

“We have a mess out there,” Kinzler said. “… it is the worst ice I’ve seen. We have 2-plus inches of ice around some wires.”

The weight of the ice on the lines and poles caused an estimated 500 poles to fail.

“We still have some poles breaking Wednesday so the situation is getting worse,” Kinzler said.

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Kinzler estimates about 2,000 accounts were still without power. The cooperative’s service area includes southern Stutsman County, south to the South Dakota border and east to the Minnesota line at Wahpeton.

The first failures came on Christmas Day in the Milnor, North Dakota, area.

“Now it is mostly the western part of our system,” Kinzler said. “From Highway 1 west to the Ashley and Streeter area.”

Dustin and Lucinda Lien live in the Ypsilanti area and said they lost power at about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. They didn’t fire up the tractor-powered generator until evening because they hoped the outage would be brief.

“Our first concern was heat,” Dustin said. “We have a wood burner but otherwise the house is totally electric.”

Lucinda said they saw many downed power lines driving around the area.

“We heard it could be next week before we are back on,” Dustin said.

Dustin said they had a generator and were prepared because of a similar ice storm seven years ago.

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“It is amazing how many people still don’t have them,” he said.

The Liens were traveling to Aberdeen on Thursday to pick up another generator for a neighbor.

“We are in good shape, but we have some elderly neighbors we try to look after,” Dustin said.

Northern Plains’ service area extends from just south of Interstate 94 in Stutsman County north to the Canadian border.

“Most of our problems were in the Jamestown area,” said Seth Syverson, general manager of Northern Plains, “but it extends north as far as Spiritwood Lake and west to Medina.”

Syverson estimated about 80 poles were downed and 400 accounts were without service in the Northern Plains service area.

The cooperatives have their full crews out working on the downed poles, along with crews from neighboring electrical utilities not fighting ice damage and some staff from private contractors.

Kinzler said a crew can replace about 12 poles during an 8-hour shift.

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“It is going to take a while,” he said. “We are hoping (to restore power) by the weekend but for folks at the end of the line, it is going to be several days.”

The storm damaged the distribution lines carrying power from the substation to the end user and maintained by the cooperative and the transmission lines delivering power to the substation.

Transmission line repairs were being done by Montana-Dakota Utilities Co., Otter Tail Power Co. and other electric providers, Syverson said.

In some instances, even when the local distribution network is repaired, there is no electricity at the substation to provide power, Kinzler said.

Moderate temperatures have been a positive and a negative in this situation, he said

Nighttime temperatures in the 20s have reduced the risk of freezing in homes without electricity, Kinzler said.

The above-freezing temperatures have also created muddy conditions that have resulted in some of the equipment used to make repairs becoming stuck, he said

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Kinzler cautioned people to stay away from downed power lines that, in some instances, may still be carrying current and to be patient as crews do their jobs.

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