Pemiscot-Dunklin Electric Cooperative restores nearly 7,000

Bulldozers clear paths for utility trucks in an effort to restore power following the ice storm. Photo provided by Jim McCarty [Click to enlarge]

As of Feb. 17, 2009, power had been restored to 6,796 Pemiscot-Dunklin members.

Lineworkers working to repair ice storm damage at Pemiscot-Dunklin Electric Cooperative made a huge gain on Monday when they restored power to a large portion of Dunklin County.

Starting at 8:30 a.m., crews energized the Kennett substation and, working south, restored power to approximately 6,796 members.

Throughout the day additional substations were brought online as transmission crews working for M&A Electric Power Cooperative completed their work in the area.

By the end of the day, power was restored to all of the cooperative's substations except for three, which serve southern Pemiscot County and the area between Hayti and Kennett that includes the cooperative's office.

Crews worked until almost midnight taking care of isolated outages.

Work continued in the Gideon area today where some problems cropped up overnight.

Outage numbers for the cooperative dropped to just 1,895 as the hard work of more than 1,000 lineworkers paid off.

In the three weeks since one of the worst ice storms in Missouri history hit the Bootheel, linemen from cooperatives in Missouri, Iowa, Mississippi, and Louisiana, along with contract workers picked up from Ameren UE, replaced more than 7,000 broken poles and rebuilt approximately 1,260 miles of line.

That distance would extend from St. Louis to the California state line.

Efforts by M&A crews today will focus on a line running from the cooperative's Bucoda substation to its Denton substation.

When repairs are made to that line, the cooperative can energize most of southern Pemiscot County.

A backfeed should allow service to the Wilkerson substation located behind the cooperative office, which is still operating on a generator.