Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great to have Shannon anconing from OPPD back for an
update here this morning. Shannon, good morning, Good morning. So
progress I see by about to the tune of about
ten thousand in the last twenty four hours. Still a
lot of people. Yeah, still a lot of people in
the dark. What's the update?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So as of this morning, about five point forty five,
we're down to twenty two thousand. Are you there?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah? Hello, can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah? Sorry about that? Okay, all right, we're down to
this a little over twenty two thousand. So we need
to tackle in the coming days. And really it's amazing
that we have our mutual aid partners here to help
us because they essentially double our head count out in
the field to about six hundred boots on ground.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Wow. That's great, But there's a lot of territory to
cover too. Have the pole? Did the poles arrive yesterday
on schedule?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
The poles arrived. The poles did arrive. We added into
our inventory that we are we had to really just
again assess and try to have that help quicken the
pace of restoration. We do anticipate that by the end
of all of this, we think we'll have to replace
or repair about a thousand poles.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Incredible, Saunders really got hammered. Saunders County, Fremont. Of course,
I love Freema. How does this work? Shannon? Can you
can you give us a thumbnail lesson here on Freemont.
Part of Dodge County is on the OPBD footprint, but
but Fremont is not. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
So Freemont is serviced by a Fremont utility, and they're
a partner to us, so we work closely with them
when we have things like this happen, and I know
that we've been in contact with them and supporting them.
They did have a major audage yesterday that was restored
fairly quickly, thank goodness. So I think it just has
to do with the legislative territories that are determined for
(01:59):
public in Nebraska, right.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
And we're going to check in with Jeff Shanahan up
there in Fremont later in the morning. You and I
had a chat after the show yesterday that I think
it's important to pass on because I had received an
email from a listener who had lived in a small
community where they were all on wells, so they had
no water and there were power lines down across his
(02:26):
driveway and maybe others, and he may have been operating
under the assumption that that OPPD already knew. But your
suggestion was call again anyway, even if you've already reported.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It, right, Yes, especially if you have something like down
lines on your property, or the down lines are blocking
an exit to your property, especially if you were to
have to call emergency services to come to your property.
So really the responsibility of assessing and take care of
(03:00):
down to power lines is OPPDS. And so you know,
if you've reported your lines down or your powers out
online or through the OPPD Connect app, it would never
hurt to call back in and explain and talk to
one of our customer service representatives and really just explain
this situation and what you're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Let's go ahead and put that number out again, Shannon.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yes, So if you need to report your outage, please
call one eight hundred five five four six seven seventy three.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Great, and I will I'll continue to pass that along
here too. Well. Are do you think you're still on
track for almost everybody being back by sometime Monday?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Definitely. Our crews are working so hard, they're working tirelessly.
They'll be back. Actually, they're already back out there as
we speak, and they are assessing as they go, and
so there's still some times new discovery when we get
to an outage location and trying to restore as many
at one time as possible. And really this good weather
(04:10):
that's gonna happen through the weekend will definitely help. It'll
be a little gusty today, but nothing like we had
on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Indeed, great info, Shannon, Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Thank you, Stay safe well.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Wonderful day you too. Shannon Anconey with OPPD Fremont got
hammered worse as bad as we're worse than any community
in the state, and certainly the most populous community to
get hit as badly as it dead. And we're joined
this morning for a few minutes by Jeff Shanahan, who's
a Fremont Utility general manager. Jeff, good morning, Good morning, Jerry.
(04:42):
I appreciate you taking the time here. It just brutal
up there with all the power lines down and polls down,
and then you had the incident yesterday right where the
whole city went black for a while.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, what happened was we had obviously you know, we've
had some storm dammage up here, and so a lot
of our three of our we have three interconnections to
the network, and two of those interconnections went down, so
we were relying on one and we had our unit online,
and then the ice has just been falling off of
the poles and off of the equipment and caused the
(05:18):
other interconnection to fail, and that caused our generator to trip.
So then OPPD was great helping us get that interchange
or that tie line connected back into Fremont to be
able to restore power back to Fremont. So we really
appreciate oppd's help with that.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Right So, what is the situation this morning right now?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
If not everybody? Right now, we think we're at about
eighty percent of the people in Fremont have power. We're
still have crews out there as we speak trying to
get the rest of the folks online. We've got that
one tie line, We're getting our generators back online. We
anticipate our small unit online sometime today and our larger
unit maybe later Saturday or early Sunday.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I heard one report, uh Jeff that it would be
potentially weeks before everybody's back online in Fremont. Is Does
that sound right to you?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Well, we have some rural areas that heading out towards
the North End area from you know, in between Fremont
and North Bend. Those lines all went down, So we're
going to have to get all those rebuilt. As soon
as we get the power restored in Fremont, We're going
to get guys out there to start getting those lines
pulled off the highways and pulled off the roads and
(06:30):
start rebuilding those. So those rural areas and out to
our wastewater treatment plant in those facilities, those are going
to be a little bit longer because those are complete rebuilds.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah. What about other damage around town outside of the
power outage, Oh, there.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Was there's a ton of tree damage around Fremont. So
cruiser out there working to get the trees off of
the streets and just get them to a safe condition.
Then we'll start going through cleanup.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
You know. One of the issues that emerged big time
here and the Metro last summer, late summer when we
had that the biggest out of jppd's ever had, is
the topic came up again. Can we please what more
of these underground? Is that a discussion at all in
your community.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, we have a lot of our distribution circus are underground,
but it would be very difficult to get underground services
in a lot of these communities. It's just in some
of these older areas of town it's very difficult to do.
And typically the higher bouldage transmission lines were all overhead.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Do you do you need anything? Does the community need anything?
I mean, Omaha is close by and it's a very
generous city. What can we do?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah? I think I think right now we're getting power
to the stores, and that it was quite a run
on a couple of gas stations when they got power restored,
they got awful busy. But yeah, I think right now
we're trying to get power restored to everybody. We have
some generators that we were able to rent for our
treatment facility, and we're just working closely with OPPD and
(07:59):
the other folks that are helping us with mutilating.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Okay, so the water is good, that's all? Okay?
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah? Oh yeah, water has been fine. We don't have
any issues with water.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Great, Jeff, Thanks appreciate the time this morning on what
I know has been a very very frantic and hectic
week
Great to have Shannon anconing from OPPD back for an
update here this morning. Shannon, good morning, Good morning. So
progress I see by about to the tune of about
ten thousand in the last twenty four hours. Still a
lot of people. Yeah, still a lot of people in
the dark. What's the update?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So as of this morning, about five point forty five,
we're down to twenty two thousand. Are you there?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah? Hello, can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah? Sorry about that? Okay, all right, we're down to
this a little over twenty two thousand. So we need
to tackle in the coming days. And really it's amazing
that we have our mutual aid partners here to help
us because they essentially double our head count out in
the field to about six hundred boots on ground.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Wow. That's great, But there's a lot of territory to
cover too. Have the pole? Did the poles arrive yesterday
on schedule?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
The poles arrived. The poles did arrive. We added into
our inventory that we are we had to really just
again assess and try to have that help quicken the
pace of restoration. We do anticipate that by the end
of all of this, we think we'll have to replace
or repair about a thousand poles.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Incredible, Saunders really got hammered. Saunders County, Fremont. Of course,
I love Freema. How does this work? Shannon? Can you
can you give us a thumbnail lesson here on Freemont.
Part of Dodge County is on the OPBD footprint, but
but Fremont is not. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
So Freemont is serviced by a Fremont utility, and they're
a partner to us, so we work closely with them
when we have things like this happen, and I know
that we've been in contact with them and supporting them.
They did have a major audage yesterday that was restored
fairly quickly, thank goodness. So I think it just has
to do with the legislative territories that are determined for
(01:59):
public in Nebraska, right.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
And we're going to check in with Jeff Shanahan up
there in Fremont later in the morning. You and I
had a chat after the show yesterday that I think
it's important to pass on because I had received an
email from a listener who had lived in a small
community where they were all on wells, so they had
no water and there were power lines down across his
(02:26):
driveway and maybe others, and he may have been operating
under the assumption that that OPPD already knew. But your
suggestion was call again anyway, even if you've already reported.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It, right, Yes, especially if you have something like down
lines on your property, or the down lines are blocking
an exit to your property, especially if you were to
have to call emergency services to come to your property.
So really the responsibility of assessing and take care of
(03:00):
down to power lines is OPPDS. And so you know,
if you've reported your lines down or your powers out
online or through the OPPD Connect app, it would never
hurt to call back in and explain and talk to
one of our customer service representatives and really just explain
this situation and what you're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Let's go ahead and put that number out again, Shannon.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yes, So if you need to report your outage, please
call one eight hundred five five four six seven seventy three.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Great, and I will I'll continue to pass that along
here too. Well. Are do you think you're still on
track for almost everybody being back by sometime Monday?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Definitely. Our crews are working so hard, they're working tirelessly.
They'll be back. Actually, they're already back out there as
we speak, and they are assessing as they go, and
so there's still some times new discovery when we get
to an outage location and trying to restore as many
at one time as possible. And really this good weather
(04:10):
that's gonna happen through the weekend will definitely help. It'll
be a little gusty today, but nothing like we had
on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Indeed, great info, Shannon, Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Thank you, Stay safe well.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Wonderful day you too. Shannon Anconey with OPPD Fremont got
hammered worse as bad as we're worse than any community
in the state, and certainly the most populous community to
get hit as badly as it dead. And we're joined
this morning for a few minutes by Jeff Shanahan, who's
a Fremont Utility general manager. Jeff, good morning, Good morning, Jerry.
(04:42):
I appreciate you taking the time here. It just brutal
up there with all the power lines down and polls down,
and then you had the incident yesterday right where the
whole city went black for a while.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, what happened was we had obviously you know, we've
had some storm dammage up here, and so a lot
of our three of our we have three interconnections to
the network, and two of those interconnections went down, so
we were relying on one and we had our unit online,
and then the ice has just been falling off of
the poles and off of the equipment and caused the
(05:18):
other interconnection to fail, and that caused our generator to trip.
So then OPPD was great helping us get that interchange
or that tie line connected back into Fremont to be
able to restore power back to Fremont. So we really
appreciate oppd's help with that.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Right So, what is the situation this morning right now?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
If not everybody? Right now, we think we're at about
eighty percent of the people in Fremont have power. We're
still have crews out there as we speak trying to
get the rest of the folks online. We've got that
one tie line, We're getting our generators back online. We
anticipate our small unit online sometime today and our larger
unit maybe later Saturday or early Sunday.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I heard one report, uh Jeff that it would be
potentially weeks before everybody's back online in Fremont. Is Does
that sound right to you?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Well, we have some rural areas that heading out towards
the North End area from you know, in between Fremont
and North Bend. Those lines all went down, So we're
going to have to get all those rebuilt. As soon
as we get the power restored in Fremont, We're going
to get guys out there to start getting those lines
pulled off the highways and pulled off the roads and
(06:30):
start rebuilding those. So those rural areas and out to
our wastewater treatment plant in those facilities, those are going
to be a little bit longer because those are complete rebuilds.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah. What about other damage around town outside of the
power outage, Oh, there.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Was there's a ton of tree damage around Fremont. So
cruiser out there working to get the trees off of
the streets and just get them to a safe condition.
Then we'll start going through cleanup.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
You know. One of the issues that emerged big time
here and the Metro last summer, late summer when we
had that the biggest out of jppd's ever had, is
the topic came up again. Can we please what more
of these underground? Is that a discussion at all in
your community.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, we have a lot of our distribution circus are underground,
but it would be very difficult to get underground services
in a lot of these communities. It's just in some
of these older areas of town it's very difficult to do.
And typically the higher bouldage transmission lines were all overhead.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Do you do you need anything? Does the community need anything?
I mean, Omaha is close by and it's a very
generous city. What can we do?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah? I think I think right now we're getting power
to the stores, and that it was quite a run
on a couple of gas stations when they got power restored,
they got awful busy. But yeah, I think right now
we're trying to get power restored to everybody. We have
some generators that we were able to rent for our
treatment facility, and we're just working closely with OPPD and
(07:59):
the other folks that are helping us with mutilating.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Okay, so the water is good, that's all? Okay?
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah? Oh yeah, water has been fine. We don't have
any issues with water.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Great, Jeff, Thanks appreciate the time this morning on what
I know has been a very very frantic and hectic
week
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