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Town Talk: Hurricane Irma mutual aid update

Editor’s Note: The City of New Ulm presents a weekly column highlighting activities in different departments in the city government. Once a month the city will answer questions from readers. Questions on New Ulm city issues can be sent to comments@ci.new-ulm.mn.us.

On Wednesday, Sept. 6, the New Ulm Public Utilities Commission (NUPUC) offices received a phone call from Mike Willetts, Director of Safety for the Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association (MMUA), requesting mutual aid for the municipal utilities of Florida in anticipation of approaching Hurricane Irma.

MMUA had been contacted by the Florida Municipal Electric Association requesting assistance and was reaching out to MMUA members to assemble a team to aid in anticipated power restoration efforts. In consultation with City of New Ulm staff, it was determined that the NUPUC could provide one crew to assist with this effort and still meet obligations to ongoing project schedules for a limited time. With the departure of one crew to Florida, New Ulm’s Electric Department retains two full crews available for local service.

The New Ulm line crew departed from the city of Rochester at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, along with a number of other Minnesota municipal utilities for what is expected to be a 10-day minimum shift. New Ulm is one of 16 MMUA member cities that are sending crews to assist in the recovery effort, including Alexandria, Anoka, Austin, Brainerd, Chaska, Elk River, Grand Rapids, Marshall, Missouri River Energy Services, Moorhead, Owatonna, Redwood Falls, Rochester, St. James, Shakopee and Sleepy Eye.

The initial destination was to Paducah, Kentucky, where the crews waited through Sunday for the storm track to develop. On Sunday, the second leg of the trip brought the MMUA crews to Cartersville, Georgia, where pre-staging and preparations were made for the final leg of the trip to Kissimmee, Florida. MMUA had arranged hotels in Kentucky and Georgia for all the traveling crews.

The journey to Florida has been difficult for responding crews with the limited availability of fuel within the state of Florida. The U.S. Department of Energy is now providing real-time information about the location of fuel supply, which aided in the travels to Kissimmee on Tuesday.

The MMUA crews along with the crew from New Ulm arrived in Kissimmee on Tuesday, Sept. 12. NUPUC staff made contact with NUPUC Electric Department crew chief Nick Francis on Wednesday and confirmed their arrival in Kissimmee. Francis indicated that they will be dispatched from Kissimmee, the primary response staging area, to locations around the state of Florida. They had not seen any severe damage yet but commented that traffic was very heavy with residents returning home. They did encounter heavy rain as they left Georgia on Sept. 12, traveling through the remnants of Hurricane Irma.

According to the American Public Power Association (APPA), there were 6.5 million customers without power as of Monday, Sept. 11. By Tuesday, that number had dropped to 5.5 million – 536,000 of which were customers of public power utilities. As of the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 12, the New Ulm line crew was working to help restore electricity to these customers. The New Ulm crew helped with restoration efforts for the Kissimmee Utility Authority on Tuesday afternoon and through the day on Wednesday. With power in Kissimmee largely restored, the crew was headed on Thursday morning to the City of Lake Worth, Florida, located on the Atlantic coast just south of West Palm Beach and North of Miami. This area was hit hard by Irma and Lake Worth management reported that they still have countless lines, poles and secondary services on the ground. The latest updates from the afternoon of Wednesday, Sept. 13, has the total number of power outages down to 3.5 million total, approximately 300,000 of which were public power customers.

Mutual aid is of vital importance as all municipal utilities are exposed to natural disasters. New Ulm electric line crews have recently assisted locally in the communities of Granite Falls and Lake Crystal after damaging straight-line wind events in the late summer of 2016. This is the first time that New Ulm has sent a line crew to assist with an out-of-state disaster recovery effort. With the level of damage projected to be incurred with the Hurricane Irma storm, we feel that this effort is warranted for the protection of health, safety and life. All expenses associated with New Ulm’s contribution to recovery efforts will be reimbursed by the requesting agency.

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