It's been a rough week..
jcaut
Posts: 1,849
..and it's not over yet.
A little background info first: I live in the little town of Paris, Arkansas - west-central part of the state about 50 miles east of the Oklahoma border. It's a small rural community of about 3300 people. I'm the water treatment plant manager (potable water, not sewer) and I work for the City. We produce a lot of water for a place our size because we sell to 5 outside water associations, several of whom turn around and sell water to other water associations.
Anyway, this past Sunday about 1:00PM a storm blew through here demolishing a few structures, downing LOTS of trees and wiping out electric lines and poles. I wasn't home at the time, as my family and I were at my mom & dad's about 5 miles away, eating lunch. There was some wind there; Nothing to get excited about, but when they lost electricity I decided I'd better call the water plant to see if they still had power. I couldn't reach anyone (and cell service was down), so we headed back to town. No damage really until just inside the city limits, then it looked like a disaster area. I couldn't believe it. And it was pretty scary wondering what I was going to find at my house, especially since as we began to get closer it was apparent that our area was really hard-hit. They say it wasn't a tornado, and I guess it wasn't- But if it was straight-line winds they must have been in excess of 90mph.
I was fortunate at my house, since mine was one of the only ones in my neighborhood that DIDN'T have a tree land on it. All the damage I had was a big pecan tree that split and ripped the electric service off my house. I didn't really have time to take pictures- my 10 year old son took some, but as anyone who's been in an area where something like this happens, it's really hard to get a sense of the damage from pictures. There are two other houses on my block and they both had trees- big trees -sticking through them. The streets were mostly blocked and people were everywhere with chainsaws, handsaws- a backhoe here and there- whatever they had. Saying it was a mess is a huge understatement.
One of the things that concerned me the most was the damage to the electric lines and poles. Paris is sort of odd in that they have their own electric dept. I think there are only 5 other communities in Arkansas that do, and they're all substantially larger than we are. The city purchases power, but they have their own electric crew and they maintain their own poles, lines, transformers, etc. The electric "crew" is three people.... and it was rather obvious that there was no way that they were going to be able to deal with this on their own. 3 other 5-man crews were hired to help and as of today they've replaced over 50 poles.
It gets worse though. My water plant doesn't have emergency generators. It's stupid that we don't, and that's another story, but.... we don't have 'em. We also don't have enough storage tank capacity and it just so happened that this storm occured during a time of unusually heavy water usage, plus several uprooted trees pulled water mains out of the ground- by dark Sunday, we were out of water. Now if you're thinking I'm going to start talking about fire next, you're thinking about exactly the same thing that I was thinking about at the time, but fortunately that didn't happen. That's good news.
The electric crews worked all through the night on Sunday and restored power to the water plant (amazingly) by about 10:30PM. We get priority, of course. On Monday though, more tragedy as one of the electric crews (contract though, not City) had 3 linemen injured and one killed when a tree limb fell onto the line they were working on, causing it to bounce back up into overhead primary that was still energized. As I type this, there are still 100-200 customers without power. I fixed my meter loop and they re-connected my house on Tuesday.
We got our boil-water order lifted today- the Mayor's been on my butt about it because he doesn't understand why it was necessary in the first place, and some of the resturants in town had to shut down. Politics. But I don't want to get started on that rant. Anyway, it's been a tough week. Because the damage wasn't real widespread, we probably won't qualify for federal assistance. Just thought I'd let you all know what's been going on. I'll upload some of the pictures if there are any that are worth messing with.
Jason
A little background info first: I live in the little town of Paris, Arkansas - west-central part of the state about 50 miles east of the Oklahoma border. It's a small rural community of about 3300 people. I'm the water treatment plant manager (potable water, not sewer) and I work for the City. We produce a lot of water for a place our size because we sell to 5 outside water associations, several of whom turn around and sell water to other water associations.
Anyway, this past Sunday about 1:00PM a storm blew through here demolishing a few structures, downing LOTS of trees and wiping out electric lines and poles. I wasn't home at the time, as my family and I were at my mom & dad's about 5 miles away, eating lunch. There was some wind there; Nothing to get excited about, but when they lost electricity I decided I'd better call the water plant to see if they still had power. I couldn't reach anyone (and cell service was down), so we headed back to town. No damage really until just inside the city limits, then it looked like a disaster area. I couldn't believe it. And it was pretty scary wondering what I was going to find at my house, especially since as we began to get closer it was apparent that our area was really hard-hit. They say it wasn't a tornado, and I guess it wasn't- But if it was straight-line winds they must have been in excess of 90mph.
I was fortunate at my house, since mine was one of the only ones in my neighborhood that DIDN'T have a tree land on it. All the damage I had was a big pecan tree that split and ripped the electric service off my house. I didn't really have time to take pictures- my 10 year old son took some, but as anyone who's been in an area where something like this happens, it's really hard to get a sense of the damage from pictures. There are two other houses on my block and they both had trees- big trees -sticking through them. The streets were mostly blocked and people were everywhere with chainsaws, handsaws- a backhoe here and there- whatever they had. Saying it was a mess is a huge understatement.
One of the things that concerned me the most was the damage to the electric lines and poles. Paris is sort of odd in that they have their own electric dept. I think there are only 5 other communities in Arkansas that do, and they're all substantially larger than we are. The city purchases power, but they have their own electric crew and they maintain their own poles, lines, transformers, etc. The electric "crew" is three people.... and it was rather obvious that there was no way that they were going to be able to deal with this on their own. 3 other 5-man crews were hired to help and as of today they've replaced over 50 poles.
It gets worse though. My water plant doesn't have emergency generators. It's stupid that we don't, and that's another story, but.... we don't have 'em. We also don't have enough storage tank capacity and it just so happened that this storm occured during a time of unusually heavy water usage, plus several uprooted trees pulled water mains out of the ground- by dark Sunday, we were out of water. Now if you're thinking I'm going to start talking about fire next, you're thinking about exactly the same thing that I was thinking about at the time, but fortunately that didn't happen. That's good news.
The electric crews worked all through the night on Sunday and restored power to the water plant (amazingly) by about 10:30PM. We get priority, of course. On Monday though, more tragedy as one of the electric crews (contract though, not City) had 3 linemen injured and one killed when a tree limb fell onto the line they were working on, causing it to bounce back up into overhead primary that was still energized. As I type this, there are still 100-200 customers without power. I fixed my meter loop and they re-connected my house on Tuesday.
We got our boil-water order lifted today- the Mayor's been on my butt about it because he doesn't understand why it was necessary in the first place, and some of the resturants in town had to shut down. Politics. But I don't want to get started on that rant. Anyway, it's been a tough week. Because the damage wasn't real widespread, we probably won't qualify for federal assistance. Just thought I'd let you all know what's been going on. I'll upload some of the pictures if there are any that are worth messing with.
Jason
Post edited by jcaut on
Comments
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Wow, thats CRAZY!
Hope everything turns out okay and that all will be better.
On another note, I've been thinking about "disaster preparedness" and things like that over the past few weeks...polkaudio RT35 Bookshelves
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Thanks. And I feel fine.
Ha ha -
Weather kills more people than war. I'm glad that you and your family are safe. I'll keep your community in my thoughts and prayers. Good luck!Carl
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Sounds like it could have been much worse. Best of luck man.Source: Bluesound Node 2i - Preamp/DAC: Benchmark DAC2 DX - Amp: Parasound Halo A21 - Speakers: MartinLogan Motion 60XTi - Shop Rig: Yamaha A-S501 Integrated - Shop Spkrs: Elac Debut 2.0 B5.2
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And the week is not over yet!!! We are under a Tornado watch at the moment with a 100% chance of HEAVY rain+hail tonight,which brings the Flash Flood warnings.
It's been a tough Spring around the Country for sure...Glad you and yours are O.K. -
Stay safe folks.Michael
In the beginning, all knowledge was new!
NORTH of 60° -
Wow, that does sound like a really tough week. But it also sounds like you had a lot of people in the community (and outside) to chip in and help get things going again. Sounds like those electrical crews were really doing overtime.
Hat's off to all of them, especially those who were injured/killed and their families.
Glad you and your house are ok!
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