Few complaints on handling of power outage

Members of the public and representatives from NorthWestern Energy praised each other Monday for their efforts dealing with a massive power outage during and after the record-breaking Oct. 2-3 snowstorm.

The comments were made at a meeting at Havre City Hall Monday, hosted by the Montana Public Service Commission.

Travis Kavulla, R-Great Falls, vice chairman of the commission, whose district includes the region from Chester to Malta that experienced the power outage, led the discussion.

"This is definitely an unusual outage in terms of scale in Montana," Kavulla said. "We thought it would not only be an opportune time for NorthWestern to present not only how it reacted to the outage but also any kind of lessons learned."

Commissioners Bob Lake, R-Hamilton, and Tony O'Donnell. R-Billings, listened in on the meeting by speaker phone.

NorthWestern CEO Bob Rowe told the audience he was proud of the efforts of NorthWestern employees in the field and at customer response centers in Butte and South Dakota. He added he was appreciative of the citizens and community leaders in the affected areas for their cooperation and willingness to help out.

He said the storm was the largest NorthWestern had to deal with as a company in Montana since an ice storm in 1982.

A short video presentation was shown, in which NorthWestern Havre District Manager Carson Sweeney talked about the recovery. He thanked Patrick Construction for using its trucks to help fuel NorthWestern trucks as needed.

"Our guys just wanted to keep going and get the power on as soon as we can for all the customers," Sweeney said in the video.

Businesses, he added, opened up early and stayed open late to ensure workers in the field were fed. He said one business opened early and cooked 100 breakfast sandwiches for NorthWestern employees out in the field.

Jason Merkel. NorthWestern general manager, said the storm affected service to NorthWestern customers as far west as Chester, east as Malta and south as Loma.

NorthWestern, he said, began hearing about power outages at about 4 p.m. Oct 2. He added that at about 7 p.m., NorthWestern realized that a majority of customers in Havre eastward were affected.

Most overhead facilities that stretched from north to south were impacted by ice, Merkel said.

"Anything running east to west there was some damage, but for the most part anything running north to south was significantly impacted," Merkel said.

By 8 a.m. the next morning about 7,000 customers in the Havre district were without power and in all 8,500 were impacted by the storm, he said.

That morning, an incident command system was implemented, with Sweeney put in place as commander, Merkel said.

The first priority of the command strategy, he said, was restoring power at transmission stations and substations. Restoration of power to community infrastructure or customers that can help kickstart the community was the next priority.

"There were snow plows out, there was emergency services out and all those things require fuel, food, those types of things," Merkel said.

"So we concentrate strategically," he said. "We concentrate on areas of the community that are going to be able to provide those functions not only us internally, but also for others in the community."

NorthWestern then worked to restore power to high density residential areas and, lastly, more sparsely populated rural areas. Merkel said

He said by the Sunday after the storm, 500 customers remained without power, but those 500 needed a lot of work, as rural taps sustained heavy damage from the storm.

There is still work that remains, Merkel said. As many as 70 poles need to be put back up. Low-priority systems such as seasonal customers and irrigation pumps still need to have power restored and will again have power by spring.

Tom Patrick of Patrick Construction said that in 64 years living in the area he had never seen such a storm.

"You can say what you want about these NorthWestern Energy boys and the guys in charge, but as a whole they did one hell of a job," Patrick said.

"It was a tremendous thing these guys did for the city on our end," Peterson said.

Doug Holzhausen of Havre said the only thing he could think of that NorthWestern Energy could do in the future would be to cut down more tree branches near power lines.

"You know, when you got them hanging over the line to start with, you know when you get a storm where they are going to end up," he said.

Curt Pohl, vice president of distribution for NorthWestern, said the company has invested a lot in its tree cutting program in the last six years and they could do more. He added that many times they do run into opposition to trim tree branches in some neighborhoods.

Kuvulla also read two emails from customers who he said wanted to be at the meeting but could not attend.

Dustin Wegner, who lives near Dodson, sent an email about three families without power, He said all three had called into NorthWestern to report the outage and downed lines but NorthWestern said that they were already aware of the outrage and not to call again. Representatives, he said, did not ask for any specific information.

Lines are still down in one field, the email said, but the property owner who called in was told crews were working on it and not to call again.

He said all three families were without heat and frozen food went bad due to the loss of electricity.

Wegner said in the email that it would be nice if NorthWestern Energy could help out with some of the cost for people to set up generators, so furnaces and fridges could be in operation in the event of a power outage.

Will Mangold, another customer, said he was upset about the lack of two-way communications between NorthWestern and customers.

Pohl said it is unfortunate when customers do not feel they were communicated with as well as they could have been.

"We are doing the best we can when we have an incident like this and the massive storm that you have, and it's unacceptable if we have any customers that we are not doing as good of a job as we can be with communications," Pohl said. "I would say we will follow up with each one of these and talk with them personally just to see where the majority of their concerns lie."