Mutual assistance program gets the power restored quickly
Memorial Day is associated with parades, family gatherings and honoring fallen military men and women. But for tens of thousands of Missourians, the 2024 holiday will be marked by memories of damage and destruction caused by severe storms.
The Memorial Day weekend storms left a trail of 500 broken poles — including 30 transmission poles. The hardest hit included Barry, Black River, SEMO, Ozark Border, Howell-Oregon and M & A electric cooperatives. While employees of those co-ops shifted into high gear, a team of reinforcements was called in to help. More than 150 lineworkers from as far north as the Missouri-Iowa border showed up to assist with outages in southern Missouri, as well as Arkansas.
“The goal with sending in crews from the other co-ops is to get the lines back in the air as quickly and safely as possible,” says Craig Moeller, storm coordinator for Missouri Electric Cooperatives.
Every electric cooperative has an emergency plan, and part of the planning for major outages includes mutual aid. Way back in 1948, Boone Electric Cooperative Manager R.J. Martin had a great idea. His plan: when a storm knocked out power lines for one of Missouri’s electric cooperatives, they would call on electric cooperatives out of harm’s way for assistance. Ironically, his co-op would be the first to call for help when a winter storm blanketed Missouri with ice in January 1949. Boone Electric’s appeal was answered by Farmers’ Electric Cooperative in Chillicothe, which sent one truck and three men.
Today all it takes is a single phone call to the Missouri Electric Cooperatives office in Jefferson City to get men and machines on the way. Through this time-tested Mutual Assistance Program major outages are now measured in days instead of weeks.
The statewide team works closely with the National Weather Service to share information with co-ops in the storm’s expected path so they can be ready. Trucks are loaded with materials, and employees prepare for spending their nights at the office or out on the lines.
It’s all hands on deck as the storm passes through and operations personnel assess the damage. If it’s bad enough the call for help goes out, specifying how many extra lineworkers and what type of trucks are needed. Within hours of the call help is on its way, because neighboring crews have already been put on alert.
In the days before R.J. Martin proposed his plan, co-op members weren’t quite so reliant on electricity. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for an electric co-op to learn about an outage via postcard. These days electricity is essential. That’s why one common denominator can be found whatever the issue: electric co-ops are never alone, no matter what Mother Nature sends their way.