Hometown utility electric line crews from Missouri communities are en route to southwest Mississippi to perform power restoration work after damage from Hurricane Ida.
Organized by the Missouri Public Utility Alliance, lineworker crews from Missouri cities are relocating to an area of southwest Mississippi hard hit by the storm. The combined response of 32 lineworkers involves hometown crews from the Missouri cities of Carthage, Higginsville, Independence, Lebanon, Nixa, Palmyra and Poplar Bluff.
Poplar Bluff Municipal Utilities sent a crew of four linemen to the area, according to General manager Bill Bach, who noted local crews also were sent to Orlando, Florida, during a hurricane last year.
“We’ve been to Florida probably three times, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and maybe Alabama,” Bach said.
Bach said it is normal procedure, if the utility is in a position to send help, to do so.
Likewise, he said, “if I have an ice storm, I’ll call it in.
“That’s why I participate, so hopefully if anything bad ever happens to us, maybe they will reciprocate and come up here and help us.”
The line crews will assist the Southwest Electric Cooperative, a power company serving a nine-county area that includes Natchez, Mississippi, where they will be based as they work. The workers will arrive equipped with bucket trucks, digger/derrick trucks and other utility vehicles and machines used for power restoration work.
Responding to a mutual assistance request last week, the crews were staged Saturday in Alexandria, Louisiana, prepared for power restoration work there. But after the Category 4 hurricane struck New Orleans and southeast Louisiana Sunday night, the path of the hurricane carried it further to the northeast through the Mississippi River valley, continuing to cause extensive damage as it cruised further inland.
The responding crews are from “public power” electric utilities, not-for-profit community-owned electric utilities that serve their individual cities. These cities have agreements in place allowing staff to assist neighboring communities and states during widespread outages in other communities. Mutual aid crews from Missouri hometown utilities assisted Gulf area utilities twice in storm recoveries last year, repairing damage caused by Hurricane Laura (August 2020) and Hurricane Delta (October 2020).
Missouri’s hometown utility mutual aid response is coordinated through MPUA’s mutual aid network. Assisting cities are reimbursed by the municipal utilities receiving assistance.
MPUA’s mutual aid network is part of a national public power mutual aid network coordinated by the American Public Power Association, which links more than 2,000 public power and rural electric cooperatives so they can help each other in times of need.
At least 150 Missouri lineworkers from 30 of the state’s electric cooperatives, including six from the Ozark Border Electric Cooperative in Poplar Bluff, also will be sent to the region. They will assist the DEMCO Electric Cooperative east of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
That work is being coordinated by the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives.
“Missouri’s electric cooperatives have a long history of lending a helping hand to its cooperative peers in trying times,” the AMEC said in a news release.