Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pleasure to have a mayrist author join us for a
few minutes this morning in the wake of what was
the biggest storm in terms of the number of people
without power and the history of Omaha. Mayer, Good morning,
Good to have you back.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning, good briefing.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yesterday pretty thorough. What would you like Omahan's to know
this morning?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well, I think OPBD is are the people of the hour,
because the main thing is is there's still a lot
of power outages. As you said, and we said yesterday,
this is the biggest number of outages that we have
had in the history of the city. And so at
the peak, you know, Wednesday evening into Wednesday night, there
(00:41):
was over two hundred and twenty thousand outages. And when
they say outages, they go by the number of meters,
so you know, that doesn't include how many people are
suffering from it, because it could be a house of
ten people, so they're only going by the meters. As
of this morning, they are down to ninety thousand outages,
so really sixty percent has been restored, but unfortunately they
(01:04):
continue we continue to see trees and limbs falling causing
additional outages. So OPBD has been absolutely great they have
about eight hundred sixty nine hundred or so people in
the field. They're working sixteen hour plus days. They've hired
some local contractors, they have mutual aid, but unfortunately they
(01:25):
are still predicting that total restoration won't be till next
Wednesday or Thursday, so that is a long way off
within this heat without a lot of power. We've got
a lot of boots on the ground. With the City
of Omaha, the Parks Department runs the drop off sites.
We have five that are pretty evenly spread all over
(01:47):
the city, but we're very limited in those sites. They're
run by the Parks Department, Like I said, but we
have to have good easy access to get in there
and to get out of there, and we have to
have the capacity. I know yesterday I got a lot
of complaints about people waiting in line for a long time.
We understand that. We have asked Jif Schmater if he
(02:10):
could get police out there today to do traffic control,
which he is going to do because our Parks department
was just not equipped yesterday or experienced in traffic control
of that magnitude. Because so many people were out trying
to bring things to those dump sites. And then there
was some road construction around some of the areas and
that made it even harder to navigate the worst yesterday,
(02:33):
I will say we're at tal Park, Heflinger and at
one hundred and fifty six Street, and those were pretty
much the worst sites as far as traffic that we
hope with the police out there today it'll be easier
to navigate that. And then as far as trash goes,
we still are telling people on their designated day to
(02:54):
put their trash out by six in the morning. It
might be late. Yesterday we had six thousand misses and
one day alone, and that's mainly because the dump trucks
from SCC couldn't get through the streets yet. So our
public Works department first and biggest priority is getting the
streets and the public right away cleared so the dump
(03:17):
trucks and everything else can get through, especially to pick
up the trash. So, I mean, it's a mess. It
was a direct hit city wide, if you can believe it.
I was on the interstate when it hit the worst,
going down to an event I had to go to
in South Omaha, and so I was outside when a
lot of this happened. Every portion of city was hit,
(03:40):
but with our assessment yesterday, it looks like mid Omaha
to Western Omaha was hit the worst and has the
worst damage.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It was like a hurricane. Now, a couple of things, Gene,
I was at the intersection of one hundred and thirty
Second and West Center Road yesterday. That was a genuine morass.
Most people don't understand what to do at afore way
stop because they probably didn't have driver's education. Is there
possibility that we could have the Omaha Police Department take
(04:09):
us back one hundred years and have a traffic cop
in the middle of the road directing traffic. And I
don'ld say that facetiously because we're going to have a
major accident somewhere and I don't know which of those
intersections still are without power, But if like one hundred
and thirty Second and West Center is one of them,
what's the chance of getting a cop out there with
a whistle?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
And there is the keeping my number one? You know
this is important because what you said, we don't want accidents.
I will tell you one of the busiest intersections in
Omaha is at one hundred and twentieth in l and
it was backed up for miles yesterday just because of
what you are saying. So we will be talking to
Tie Schmudter about traffic control. Like I said, we're short
(04:51):
on cops right now, but we're getting some out to
the dump sites today and that definitely is a possibility.
Hopefully a lot of those street lights will be restored today,
as everybody knows, when the power goes out, they go
out too. But people need to be treating those intersections
as for a way stops, and I think that, I mean,
people just got to get that in mind. All four
(05:12):
corners stop and then you take your turns going across.
But when you're backed up for two miles, that doesn't
work real well. And so like you said, I think
in those busiest intersections we have in Town one hundred
and thirty, second in center, I would say ninetieth and Dodge,
one hundred and twentieth and l those very very busy
intersections definitely could use a traffic cop to keep that
(05:32):
flow going a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Quicker got this from Tim on the email. I was
next to Mayor Jean on the interstate. That was surprising
to see or driving that garbage truck. You know, people
have not lost their sense of you through all of this.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
No, I'm not driving garbage trucks, but I will. I
do want to say, there's three more messages. I think
it's really important for me to get across. And there
are several volunteer organizations that are sending help to Omaha
to assist Omaha homeowners clear damage to private property. We
did this back with the storm of twenty twenty one.
There was a group called Team Rubicon. They are definitely coming.
(06:08):
There's no eligibility requirements. Douglas County Emergency Management is also
waiting to confirm two other groups to come in and
volunteer and to get that help. Like I said, there's
no eligibility requirements, call night or two to one one.
That's where the assistance is being coordinated. So people if
they need help clearing their individual yards because the city
(06:31):
does not do that, they can call our two to
one one and they will help coordinate that. So that's important.
The other thing is those dump sites we had people
saying yesterday they were full already. We are hiring local
contractors working through the night to mult those up so
that we could clear it out and then we could
(06:52):
have it ready for the next day. Again, people were
asking me, why don't we have more dump sites? But
we have those five. It's important to know that we
are managing five other sites also that the city, OPPD
and NDOT are using. So basically, the city is trying
to manage ten dump sites with massive amounts of debris
(07:16):
that we have to get most up and clear out
to make room for more. So this is a big process,
and we do apologize for the weights yesterday, but we
never ever imagined the magnitude of this storm and so
hopefully we'll just continue to catch up with multing all
that debris and then having room the next day. And
then lastly, we really encourage people if they can, to
(07:39):
download the city's mobile app. It's called Mobile Omaha, and
you can get alerts with that. You can get email,
texts or both if you sign up to it. And
we are continuously updating people of what's going on as
far as the clearing, the power, everything else on our
mobile app. The mobile app is for us to give information.
(08:01):
If people have, you know, questions or need to call
in for answers, they could still use my hotline at
four four four or five five five five.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Okay, just before we run here, this may see them odd,
But I'm got an input here, Mayor, people willing to
help if if it's needed. Does the city have any
place for volunteers on the cleanup?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
You know that right now? I think that is all
being not through the city, but through Douglas County Emergency Management,
and they would be the ones that could coordinate anything
like that. And so, you know, we had a lot
of people that were offering to help when we had
the tornado on Arbor Day, and we had some nonprofit
groups right out there that we're helping to coordinate that.
(08:43):
But that was, you know, in one specific area, and
this gets really difficult when the entire city was hit
as bad as it was, So Douglas County Emergency Management
would be the site to call for that or to
call nine or two one one. I keep on saying nine,
it's two to one one, and again those folks are
trying to coordinate assistance through two to one one.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's pretty cool though. I love that spirit, the willingness
to help. Mayor, Thank you so much. Always good to
have you on.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Appreciate the time you bet thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Got many in Douglas County and the surrounding area. Struggling
to deal with power outages and debris and down limbs,
and it's great to have Wendell Young with us for
a few minutes this morning. You may have heard Wendell
and the Mayor's briefing yesterday. He is oppd's director of
customer Service.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Wendell good morning, Good morning, Gary.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
How are you well. It's good to have you on.
I appreciate you taking the time here. So that was
about that was about what twenty hours ago? Twenty one
hours ago? What can you tell us about the status
of restoration since then?
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Yeah, the condition continues to improve. We had a great
day yesterday. I think you had the mayor on earlier.
But you know, we are down to about ninety thousand
or so customers still out of power. We're already back
out in field this morning. We studied at six am
and we'll continue through the evening tonight until about nine.
(10:08):
We've also added some additional cruise I think I mentioned
that in the press conference yesterday that we were going
to do that, and so we've added another seventy crews,
so we're up to around eight hundred and sixty nine
hundred actual people on the ground. So that's a combination
of all resources for transmission, construction, distribution, our mutual aid groups,
(10:33):
tree trimming, and all of those folks. So we're making
great progress, but we still have a ways to go.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Okay, Wendall, listen, Jim Rows. We have a major other
problem that has developed, may not be getting the kind
of attention. Maybe you can speak to it. But the
longer this goes on without power at pump stations around
subdivisions and in some sids, sewers would again backing up
into people's houses. Are you addressing this problem? Is it
a problem? What's going on?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:01):
So on the lift station side, mostly in the in
the waste in the wastewater treatment facility area, we do
have visibility of those. If there are specific lift station
issues in s I d s, meaning in neighborhoods or subdivisions,
please report those to OPPD so that we can make
(11:23):
sure that we are giving those some attention. We have
not we have not had any public discharge into any
of the river or water systems as far as I
know today. But that's that's really the best way to
make sure that we're staying on top of all of
those challenges.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Okay, So are you aware of pump stations, of wastewater
pump stations that do not have power, or are you
relying on individual citizens to alert you to this?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
We have we have that level of detail at the
city jurisdictional level. We do know where all the circuit
out just are. If there are other issues that are
more localized, they may be collected within a larger group
of vitages at a smaller scale, So we we do
(12:12):
have some awareness of that, but clearly we may not
know of everything. So if there are any emergent needs,
any emergent issues, I still encourage the public to report
those times.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Okay, what what would they be looking for, Wenal, what
would individuals be looking for that would be a problem.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
If you Yeah, generally, generally speaking, you know there there
aren't any major and this is more of a city
administration question, so I don't want to speak for them,
but if you are seeing serviceability problems within your home,
certainly report those to your s I D and your
city jurisdictions that that's something that needs to really get
(12:53):
to those folks standing water, You're you're gonna still see
those with the heavy rainfall that we've seen in the area.
Of course, you guys are all aware. We've had flooding
issues in the past and just in the recent months.
So again, report those to the city jurisdictions for for
that kind of communication, and then the city jurisdictions have
access to make sure that they share priority priority outage
(13:16):
issues with us.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Okay, you indicated yesterday or oppdded via social media that
people could find out information about specific locations. Is that
is that happening and and what does that entail? Is
that just a phone call or what if they want
to know how things are going in their neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Yeah, great, great question. There's this. There's a number of
different ways to find out what's going on. We have
us uh of course, our social media presence on nextdoor
on Facebook. You can also find information on our website
at stormanoutage dot com. We continuously post the messages and
(13:57):
updates there. Another way folks can report outages is through
their my accounts, and we are doing some proactive calls
to inform customers of either restoration status and in confirmation
of restoration in the in the area order, or to
(14:19):
inform them about a status of whether or not they're
in a situation where they may experience and extended out it.
So we are making those phone calls as well.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Can you give us suggest because we're not electrical engineer people,
can you give us a general idea how how these
connections work? Because we see countless reports and I saw
it in my neighborhood where one block will or several
blocks will be dark and then a block away they
did not lose power. Were these what are separate circuits
(14:49):
that that?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Like in a neighborhood if a transformer gets hit by
a lightning bolt, it would affect one street but not another.
How does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Sure, let me. Let let me stay at a high
level for all this is that we want to hear
that answer. Here's my response to general answer to that
is the system is protected with a series of protected devices.
They could be circuit reclosers, they could be fuses. When
trees or animals get in contact and a localized area
(15:21):
there is potential for the fuse in that localized area
to open up or blow. That particular situation protects the
equipment in that area. An event like that may or
may not create the same reaction on neighbors either a
block or so away, and therefore that fuse may still
(15:41):
be intact. So if the circuit is energized at the
substation into the neighborhood, but the fuse is blown on
any service area for a localized group of customers, say
up to eight or more, you may experience some what
we call nested or spot outages throughout a neighborhood, so
that there is a possibility of that as well. When
we talk about seven to eight day durations of restoration,
(16:05):
those that are on the latter end of that are
the ones that may be experiencing situations like these types
of bestaboutages. So again that's why it's so important for
folks to report outages that they're experiencing. Report if they
have power, there's a way to do that to say, hey,
my power is okay, but my neighbor is out or
vice versa. That gives us an idea of what the
(16:26):
damage looks like in that area, and it gives us
better ability to dispatch the appropriate crews to support okay.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And that's through the OPBD app.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
You can do that through the app, you can through
that through my account, you can do that through opp
dot com, And of course we are grouping and assessing
those outages in real time as they come in.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Okay, so just just a wrap it, Genalin. We appreciate
the time an individual can reach out to find out
about the progress in a specific neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Is that right, right? So there there are updates that
we provide, typically at the circuit level, which is a
broader area than one specific streeter block or series of blocks.
It'll be more in a region of service, so you
can see whether or not the outer has been reported.
Most of the time you'll see that yes, we are
(17:24):
aware there's a non outage in your area. That type
of information and feedback will happen. Once we feel that
we have the majority of customers restored, we'll start making
callouts and callbacks to confirm that yes, we believe that
your power has been restored, and if you do not
still have power, then you can report back and that
(17:44):
informs us that you still are in a situation where
you're at.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
That's good to know because I thought once you're reported
that you were done. But it's good to do. The
updates absolutely perfect view updates.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Yeah, give me a call anytime, Gary, I'm always here
to help.
Pleasure to have a mayrist author join us for a
few minutes this morning in the wake of what was
the biggest storm in terms of the number of people
without power and the history of Omaha. Mayer, Good morning,
Good to have you back.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning, good briefing.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yesterday pretty thorough. What would you like Omahan's to know
this morning?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well, I think OPBD is are the people of the hour,
because the main thing is is there's still a lot
of power outages. As you said, and we said yesterday,
this is the biggest number of outages that we have
had in the history of the city. And so at
the peak, you know, Wednesday evening into Wednesday night, there
(00:41):
was over two hundred and twenty thousand outages. And when
they say outages, they go by the number of meters,
so you know, that doesn't include how many people are
suffering from it, because it could be a house of
ten people, so they're only going by the meters. As
of this morning, they are down to ninety thousand outages,
so really sixty percent has been restored, but unfortunately they
(01:04):
continue we continue to see trees and limbs falling causing
additional outages. So OPBD has been absolutely great they have
about eight hundred sixty nine hundred or so people in
the field. They're working sixteen hour plus days. They've hired
some local contractors, they have mutual aid, but unfortunately they
(01:25):
are still predicting that total restoration won't be till next
Wednesday or Thursday, so that is a long way off
within this heat without a lot of power. We've got
a lot of boots on the ground. With the City
of Omaha, the Parks Department runs the drop off sites.
We have five that are pretty evenly spread all over
(01:47):
the city, but we're very limited in those sites. They're
run by the Parks Department, Like I said, but we
have to have good easy access to get in there
and to get out of there, and we have to
have the capacity. I know yesterday I got a lot
of complaints about people waiting in line for a long time.
We understand that. We have asked Jif Schmater if he
(02:10):
could get police out there today to do traffic control,
which he is going to do because our Parks department
was just not equipped yesterday or experienced in traffic control
of that magnitude. Because so many people were out trying
to bring things to those dump sites. And then there
was some road construction around some of the areas and
that made it even harder to navigate the worst yesterday,
(02:33):
I will say we're at tal Park, Heflinger and at
one hundred and fifty six Street, and those were pretty
much the worst sites as far as traffic that we
hope with the police out there today it'll be easier
to navigate that. And then as far as trash goes,
we still are telling people on their designated day to
(02:54):
put their trash out by six in the morning. It
might be late. Yesterday we had six thousand misses and
one day alone, and that's mainly because the dump trucks
from SCC couldn't get through the streets yet. So our
public Works department first and biggest priority is getting the
streets and the public right away cleared so the dump
(03:17):
trucks and everything else can get through, especially to pick
up the trash. So, I mean, it's a mess. It
was a direct hit city wide, if you can believe it.
I was on the interstate when it hit the worst,
going down to an event I had to go to
in South Omaha, and so I was outside when a
lot of this happened. Every portion of city was hit,
(03:40):
but with our assessment yesterday, it looks like mid Omaha
to Western Omaha was hit the worst and has the
worst damage.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It was like a hurricane. Now, a couple of things, Gene,
I was at the intersection of one hundred and thirty
Second and West Center Road yesterday. That was a genuine morass.
Most people don't understand what to do at afore way
stop because they probably didn't have driver's education. Is there
possibility that we could have the Omaha Police Department take
(04:09):
us back one hundred years and have a traffic cop
in the middle of the road directing traffic. And I
don'ld say that facetiously because we're going to have a
major accident somewhere and I don't know which of those
intersections still are without power, But if like one hundred
and thirty Second and West Center is one of them,
what's the chance of getting a cop out there with
a whistle?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
And there is the keeping my number one? You know
this is important because what you said, we don't want accidents.
I will tell you one of the busiest intersections in
Omaha is at one hundred and twentieth in l and
it was backed up for miles yesterday just because of
what you are saying. So we will be talking to
Tie Schmudter about traffic control. Like I said, we're short
(04:51):
on cops right now, but we're getting some out to
the dump sites today and that definitely is a possibility.
Hopefully a lot of those street lights will be restored today,
as everybody knows, when the power goes out, they go
out too. But people need to be treating those intersections
as for a way stops, and I think that, I mean,
people just got to get that in mind. All four
(05:12):
corners stop and then you take your turns going across.
But when you're backed up for two miles, that doesn't
work real well. And so like you said, I think
in those busiest intersections we have in Town one hundred
and thirty, second in center, I would say ninetieth and Dodge,
one hundred and twentieth and l those very very busy
intersections definitely could use a traffic cop to keep that
(05:32):
flow going a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Quicker got this from Tim on the email. I was
next to Mayor Jean on the interstate. That was surprising
to see or driving that garbage truck. You know, people
have not lost their sense of you through all of this.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
No, I'm not driving garbage trucks, but I will. I
do want to say, there's three more messages. I think
it's really important for me to get across. And there
are several volunteer organizations that are sending help to Omaha
to assist Omaha homeowners clear damage to private property. We
did this back with the storm of twenty twenty one.
There was a group called Team Rubicon. They are definitely coming.
(06:08):
There's no eligibility requirements. Douglas County Emergency Management is also
waiting to confirm two other groups to come in and
volunteer and to get that help. Like I said, there's
no eligibility requirements, call night or two to one one.
That's where the assistance is being coordinated. So people if
they need help clearing their individual yards because the city
(06:31):
does not do that, they can call our two to
one one and they will help coordinate that. So that's important.
The other thing is those dump sites we had people
saying yesterday they were full already. We are hiring local
contractors working through the night to mult those up so
that we could clear it out and then we could
(06:52):
have it ready for the next day. Again, people were
asking me, why don't we have more dump sites? But
we have those five. It's important to know that we
are managing five other sites also that the city, OPPD
and NDOT are using. So basically, the city is trying
to manage ten dump sites with massive amounts of debris
(07:16):
that we have to get most up and clear out
to make room for more. So this is a big process,
and we do apologize for the weights yesterday, but we
never ever imagined the magnitude of this storm and so
hopefully we'll just continue to catch up with multing all
that debris and then having room the next day. And
then lastly, we really encourage people if they can, to
(07:39):
download the city's mobile app. It's called Mobile Omaha, and
you can get alerts with that. You can get email,
texts or both if you sign up to it. And
we are continuously updating people of what's going on as
far as the clearing, the power, everything else on our
mobile app. The mobile app is for us to give information.
(08:01):
If people have, you know, questions or need to call
in for answers, they could still use my hotline at
four four four or five five five five.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Okay, just before we run here, this may see them odd,
But I'm got an input here, Mayor, people willing to
help if if it's needed. Does the city have any
place for volunteers on the cleanup?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
You know that right now? I think that is all
being not through the city, but through Douglas County Emergency Management,
and they would be the ones that could coordinate anything
like that. And so, you know, we had a lot
of people that were offering to help when we had
the tornado on Arbor Day, and we had some nonprofit
groups right out there that we're helping to coordinate that.
(08:43):
But that was, you know, in one specific area, and
this gets really difficult when the entire city was hit
as bad as it was, So Douglas County Emergency Management
would be the site to call for that or to
call nine or two one one. I keep on saying nine,
it's two to one one, and again those folks are
trying to coordinate assistance through two to one one.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's pretty cool though. I love that spirit, the willingness
to help. Mayor, Thank you so much. Always good to
have you on.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Appreciate the time you bet thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Got many in Douglas County and the surrounding area. Struggling
to deal with power outages and debris and down limbs,
and it's great to have Wendell Young with us for
a few minutes this morning. You may have heard Wendell
and the Mayor's briefing yesterday. He is oppd's director of
customer Service.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Wendell good morning, Good morning, Gary.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
How are you well. It's good to have you on.
I appreciate you taking the time here. So that was
about that was about what twenty hours ago? Twenty one
hours ago? What can you tell us about the status
of restoration since then?
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Yeah, the condition continues to improve. We had a great
day yesterday. I think you had the mayor on earlier.
But you know, we are down to about ninety thousand
or so customers still out of power. We're already back
out in field this morning. We studied at six am
and we'll continue through the evening tonight until about nine.
(10:08):
We've also added some additional cruise I think I mentioned
that in the press conference yesterday that we were going
to do that, and so we've added another seventy crews,
so we're up to around eight hundred and sixty nine
hundred actual people on the ground. So that's a combination
of all resources for transmission, construction, distribution, our mutual aid groups,
(10:33):
tree trimming, and all of those folks. So we're making
great progress, but we still have a ways to go.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Okay, Wendall, listen, Jim Rows. We have a major other
problem that has developed, may not be getting the kind
of attention. Maybe you can speak to it. But the
longer this goes on without power at pump stations around
subdivisions and in some sids, sewers would again backing up
into people's houses. Are you addressing this problem? Is it
a problem? What's going on?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:01):
So on the lift station side, mostly in the in
the waste in the wastewater treatment facility area, we do
have visibility of those. If there are specific lift station
issues in s I d s, meaning in neighborhoods or subdivisions,
please report those to OPPD so that we can make
(11:23):
sure that we are giving those some attention. We have
not we have not had any public discharge into any
of the river or water systems as far as I
know today. But that's that's really the best way to
make sure that we're staying on top of all of
those challenges.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Okay, So are you aware of pump stations, of wastewater
pump stations that do not have power, or are you
relying on individual citizens to alert you to this?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
We have we have that level of detail at the
city jurisdictional level. We do know where all the circuit
out just are. If there are other issues that are
more localized, they may be collected within a larger group
of vitages at a smaller scale, So we we do
(12:12):
have some awareness of that, but clearly we may not
know of everything. So if there are any emergent needs,
any emergent issues, I still encourage the public to report
those times.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Okay, what what would they be looking for, Wenal, what
would individuals be looking for that would be a problem.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
If you Yeah, generally, generally speaking, you know there there
aren't any major and this is more of a city
administration question, so I don't want to speak for them,
but if you are seeing serviceability problems within your home,
certainly report those to your s I D and your
city jurisdictions that that's something that needs to really get
(12:53):
to those folks standing water, You're you're gonna still see
those with the heavy rainfall that we've seen in the area.
Of course, you guys are all aware. We've had flooding
issues in the past and just in the recent months.
So again, report those to the city jurisdictions for for
that kind of communication, and then the city jurisdictions have
access to make sure that they share priority priority outage
(13:16):
issues with us.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Okay, you indicated yesterday or oppdded via social media that
people could find out information about specific locations. Is that
is that happening and and what does that entail? Is
that just a phone call or what if they want
to know how things are going in their neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Yeah, great, great question. There's this. There's a number of
different ways to find out what's going on. We have
us uh of course, our social media presence on nextdoor
on Facebook. You can also find information on our website
at stormanoutage dot com. We continuously post the messages and
(13:57):
updates there. Another way folks can report outages is through
their my accounts, and we are doing some proactive calls
to inform customers of either restoration status and in confirmation
of restoration in the in the area order, or to
(14:19):
inform them about a status of whether or not they're
in a situation where they may experience and extended out it.
So we are making those phone calls as well.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Can you give us suggest because we're not electrical engineer people,
can you give us a general idea how how these
connections work? Because we see countless reports and I saw
it in my neighborhood where one block will or several
blocks will be dark and then a block away they
did not lose power. Were these what are separate circuits
(14:49):
that that?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Like in a neighborhood if a transformer gets hit by
a lightning bolt, it would affect one street but not another.
How does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Sure, let me. Let let me stay at a high
level for all this is that we want to hear
that answer. Here's my response to general answer to that
is the system is protected with a series of protected devices.
They could be circuit reclosers, they could be fuses. When
trees or animals get in contact and a localized area
(15:21):
there is potential for the fuse in that localized area
to open up or blow. That particular situation protects the
equipment in that area. An event like that may or
may not create the same reaction on neighbors either a
block or so away, and therefore that fuse may still
(15:41):
be intact. So if the circuit is energized at the
substation into the neighborhood, but the fuse is blown on
any service area for a localized group of customers, say
up to eight or more, you may experience some what
we call nested or spot outages throughout a neighborhood, so
that there is a possibility of that as well. When
we talk about seven to eight day durations of restoration,
(16:05):
those that are on the latter end of that are
the ones that may be experiencing situations like these types
of bestaboutages. So again that's why it's so important for
folks to report outages that they're experiencing. Report if they
have power, there's a way to do that to say, hey,
my power is okay, but my neighbor is out or
vice versa. That gives us an idea of what the
(16:26):
damage looks like in that area, and it gives us
better ability to dispatch the appropriate crews to support okay.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And that's through the OPBD app.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
You can do that through the app, you can through
that through my account, you can do that through opp
dot com, And of course we are grouping and assessing
those outages in real time as they come in.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Okay, so just just a wrap it, Genalin. We appreciate
the time an individual can reach out to find out
about the progress in a specific neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Is that right, right? So there there are updates that
we provide, typically at the circuit level, which is a
broader area than one specific streeter block or series of blocks.
It'll be more in a region of service, so you
can see whether or not the outer has been reported.
Most of the time you'll see that yes, we are
(17:24):
aware there's a non outage in your area. That type
of information and feedback will happen. Once we feel that
we have the majority of customers restored, we'll start making
callouts and callbacks to confirm that yes, we believe that
your power has been restored, and if you do not
still have power, then you can report back and that
(17:44):
informs us that you still are in a situation where
you're at.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
That's good to know because I thought once you're reported
that you were done. But it's good to do. The
updates absolutely perfect view updates.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Yeah, give me a call anytime, Gary, I'm always here
to help.
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