— from Theresa Haynie for OPALCO —
Editor’s Note: Power was restored to Eastsound residences about 11 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 7]
OPALCO crews responded to a report of a tree on lines on Shaw Island, Sunday, December 6, 2015 to find a massive tree had fallen and knocked out seven power poles. The downed lines blacked out power to roughly 3,000 members, all of Shaw Island and more than half of Orcas Island starting around 6:30 PM on Sunday. As of 5 PM on Monday, December 7, 2015, we cannot commit to a time for when power will be back on for Shaw and Orcas Island members, and the OPALCO crews are working as quickly as safety allows to return all affected members to service.
Crews secured the Indian Cove Road area of Shaw for safety, cleared the debris, and began setting replacement poles. Late tonight, Monday, crews will complete restringing the electrical lines and start to restore power. The outage, while limited to Shaw and Orcas Islands, created an enormous amount of damage to the OPALCO transmission lines. OPALCO crews continue to work on the Shaw site.
Portions of Eastsound were back on late Sunday when OPALCO rerouted service from Olga to the village to provide electrical service to Eastsound businesses and some of the Orcas Island school.
Updates are posted on the OPALCO FaceBook page (Facebook/orcaspower), and outages and update notifications to Twitter subscribers @orcaspower.
Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO) is our member-owned cooperative electric utility, serving more than 11,000 members on 20 islands in San Juan County. OPALCO provides electricity that is 95% greenhouse-gas free and is generated predominantly by hydroelectric plants. OPALCO was founded in 1937.
Thank you to all the Opalco folks who were out working their collective butts off to get our electricity back online. You are all truly appreciated.
Just like the old days !! The linemen and crews of OPALCO are truly the guardian angels of our islands.
OPALCO has come a long way from those days when power might be out for two weeks after a severe winter storm. The undergrounding of transmission lines has dramatically improved the reliability of service.
As always, a job well done!! Many, many thanks to everyone involved.
Opalco, thank you for you great efforts. A little reminder for us all on how important our little power company is. Many thanks to all the crews, staff and their families that keep us warm!
Clyde.
Terrifically grateful for all the hard work!
Here I am with another take on our recent electrical problems. Thanking individuals for doing the job they are paid handsomely to do, speaks more to the people doing the praising’s need to look good than the workers doing the job they are paid to do. Probably at time and a half if not double time.
The real question here is was Opalco negligent in the maintenance of the grid. I have ben an Opalco member for 23 years. In those 23 years I have never seen Opalco change out an old pole. There may have been some changes I overlooked but there are hundreds of poles in our system if not thousands and replacement seems to be reactive and not proactive.
Attached is a link to “The North American Wood Pole Council”
TECHNICAL BULLETIN on “The Estimated Service Life of Wood Poles”
https://www.woodpoles.org/documents/TechBulletinPoleServiceLife12-08.pdf
Now when Randy was hired to save Opalco from it’s prior terrible maintenance record, I wonder how poles fell through the cracks.
Interesting points you make, Harvey – about the lack of timely pole replacement. That is worth looking into, and bringing to OPALCO’s and the public’s attention
I still think that OPALCO linemen are heroes -at whatever pay they make. I think they deserve high pay for what they do; they risk life and limb all hours of the night in all kinds of bad weather conditions. Some gusts the other night clocked at over 70mph.
One thought I had, since this outage lasted at least 36 hours for Shaw and much of Orcas Island: If this had been a Nor’easter, how would all the people on electric-only heat fare? What would happen to their pets? The elders? These question bear addressing before it happens.
No matter my thoughts about so many of OPALCO Board’s and Manager’s policies and practices, I appreciate and commend the linemen on work well done.
My comment about the poles was my thinking that had the poles been near new six of them would not have snapped like match sticks.
As for real heros, the first responders at Ground Zero are again fighting for medical coverage from our do nothing “mostly Republican” Congress who “Talk the talk but do not Walk the Walk”. Our linemen doing their jobs are not heroes. Lets keep the terminology straight.
My definition of a hero is ANYONE who risks their lives to try to keep others safe. The guys on the OPALCO crew do NOT know what is in store for them each time they go into the windy, dark night. My goodness, several people were killed in their cars by falling trees last month in Washington alone. And that is just driving down the road in their cars!
I for one, am extremely grateful for our OPALCO crew! And everytime they venture out into the wind, this customer says a prayer.
Sadie, 25 years ago we WERE without power for almost two weeks with freezing temperatures. And, like any other nasty situation, the loving Orcas people rallied and took others into their home, delivered firewood, food, etc. We islanders survived very well. And the OPALCO crew worked their tails off!
I will ALWAYS be grateful for them and this Orcas community.
Maggie Schuler
For Jim and Ed and Clyde and Peg and Maggie: Thanking people for doing a job, even if they are paid to do it, reflects the THOUGHTFULNESS and GOOD MANNERS of those expressing the thanks. Thank you for your comments, and especially to Maggie for recalling the big storm with freezing temperatures. I remember it well. We did rally together -and said thanks, both to those who volunteered and those who were paid. And I can’t imagine, Harvey, that you don’t appreciate a “thank you” when you do a job for a client. Do you really think that they say “thank you” to you to make themselves look good? How sad.
Theresa from OPALCO here for Harvey and others: Our engineers and crew take very seriously the infrastructure work on our OPALCO system. There are between 1,800 to 2,000 poles spread across our 20-island service area, and they are each inspected on a 5-year schedule.
The transmission line and poles that were taken out by the large, 120-foot fir tree on Shaw Island were installed in 1980, and have gone through continuous maintenance. The poles are all Class 1 with a 50-year lifespan. And as a Rural Electric System (RUS) member, we are required to test each pole every 5 to 7 years. The poles damaged in this recent storm were last tested in May 2010, and the right of way trimmed last May 2015.
One of our most challenging efforts is to keep our right-of-ways clear of trees that can fall on OPALCO power lines during windstorms. In this recent event, the 120 foot tree was 60 feet away from our right-of-way. OPALCO will continue to be diligent with our right-of-way clearing efforts and respectfully request the support of our memberships during future right-of-way clearing activities.
I have responded to several fire/rescue calls involving power lines. I have the utmost respect for our linemen.
I’ve seen them come out in bad weather and darkness, in dangerous conditions, to make the scene safe for the rest of us to proceed to help out. One incident recently the winds were so high that large dangerous branches were raining down all around us, and yet the OPALCO folks were still gamely getting things done.
They are heroes in my book.
My comments were not intended to diminish or disparage the professional work that Opalco’s line crews perform on a regular basis especially in very bad weather. I just don’t believe that their professional performance rises to the level of “HERO”.
I am also fully aware of the S**t storm my comments were going to engender. I made them anyway.
hero |ˈhi(ə)rō|
noun (pl. heroes)
1 a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities: a war hero.
In support of those who are thanking OPALCO, and in support of OPALCO’s response that their pole maintenance was not ‘negligent’ (which was conveniently ignored by the person raising that point), for those not familiar with internet trolls, I am adding to the discussion a (rather lengthy) link about them:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
Please click on the link (you don’t have to read the whole thing, you’ll get the point rather quickly) and then decide for yourselves who has been the ‘troll’ in what started out as a positive discussion, and got derailed.
Trolls are cowards who troll anonymously. I say what I believe as food for thought. It is a shame that all too often the messenger is shot instead of looking for the truth that might be in the message.