From Midwest Energy
As of 6 p.m., Midwest Energy was down to fewer than 3,200 customers affected by outages, from a high of 8,000 Tuesday morning. There likely will be many without power Tuesday evening due to the widespread damage, and conditions of many of the roads where that damage is.
As of 6 p.m., Midwest had identified 472 broken poles, the majority are in Pawnee County in the Rozel/Burdett area, with a significant numbers of broken poles in Ellis, Barton, Rush, Edwards and Hodgeman counties. There are also more than 100 broken or detached crossarms that need fixed, but servicemen made good progress on these today. Most circuits where there was no structural damage, but where fuses blew due to ice loading and lines “galloping” in wind, have been identified and fixed, though there will be some to do in the morning.
Several crews are coming in under mutual aid agreements (two from DSO Electric Cooperative in Solomon; one each from Butler Electric Co-op and Wheatland Electric Co-op), as well as contract crews from Ward Electric. They will join all MWE crews and servicemen, working the next several days replacing downed poles and repairing crossarms.
The goal is to get all residential customers online first, followed by ag customers (wells and fence chargers), and oil field services.