A year on, ice storm recovery continues

EUGENE: Almost one year ago, a double-header ice storm plowed through the Pacific Northwest, wreaking havoc on electrical infrastructure across the region. The first storm hit on January 13th, and a second one rolled in three days later.

The Eugene Water & Electric Board used its reserve fund to cover the initial clean-up costs of $9.4 million, including equipment and materials replacement, staff time and contracted labor. At the height of the storm, more than half of the Lane Electric Cooperative’s system was down, resulting in about $5.9 million in damages.

“The 2024 ice storm will go down in history as one of the most damaging events for our electrical system. For some, it was an inconvenience, and for others, it was a devastating test from Mother Nature,” according to EWEB Electric Division Manager Tyler Nice, the incident commander during the storm. “But it will also be remembered as a moment when our entire utility and community came together to recover from a disaster. We were truly warmed on those icy days by the support from the community to keep up the restoration pace through all conditions.”

Lane Electric’s general manager, Debi Wilson, agrees. In a post to the Ruralite magazine, she noted that “Our first storm in 2024 was one of historical significance. For more than 2 weeks in January, Lane Electric and partner utilities and tree crews battled icy weather, downed lines, and debris to restore power to our members.”

For many residents of the upper and mid-valley sections of the McKenzie River area, the storm's intensity wasn’t apparent until they ventured into the outskirts of Thurston and the other low-lying areas.

“One of the many things that made this storm notable was the unusually heavy ice that prevented most meaningful work from being completed in the first four days,” Wilson recalled. “As ice accumulated, our linemen faced an uphill battle as new trees fell, frequently undoing completed repairs or making roads impassable.”

Surprisingly, Creswell was the hardest-hit portion of Lane Electric’s service territory. Its damage surpassed even the 2019 winter storm when of the 158 damaged or downed Lane Electric poles, a staggering 118 were in Creswell.

EWEB expects reimbursement for 75% of the total costs, with reimbursement money arriving in 2025 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a storm that took out power for 38,000 customers, or more than one-third of EWEB’s customers. The utility reports that EWEB replaced vast amounts of equipment: 352 poles and cross-arms, 92,700 feet of wire, and 84 transformers. The equipment EWEB replaced was approximately double that of the previous winter storms in 2016 and 2019.

EWEB’s Walterville and Leaburg Hydroelectric Projects lost power at the start of the storm. In response, the utility brought emergency generators to the two sites.

Early in the storm upriver, falling trees took down the transmission line that links EWEB’s Carmen Smith Hydroelectric Project to Eugene, disconnecting it from the power grid. Without access to the grid, EWEB could not produce power valued at approximately $4.3 million.

Nice said one key conclusion from the utility’s after-action report was that “EWEB needs to improve tracking of outage assessments and restorations so customers can know when power will return to their home.”