ROCHELLE — A March 14 wind storm that hit the area caused $516,236 worth of damage and expense to the Rochelle Municipal Utilities electric department through infrastructure and personnel costs, RMU Superintendent of Electric Operations Blake Toliver said April 22.

Around 11 p.m. on March 14, the storm knocked out power to 6,000 RMU customers out of its total of 7,500. 

“I still swear it was one big gust of wind,” Toliver said. “Because everything was quiet and then everything fell apart all at once. We lost 26 poles total in that storm throughout our territory. Most of those were on our trunk line, our main feeds to all of the different areas of our territory, which is why it took out so many customers. It's one of the worst outages I've worked since I've been here. I've been here almost 12 years and this is the most significant damage that I've seen other than the tornado in 2015.”

Within the first 24 hours after the initial response from the March 14 storm, RMU restored power to every home in its territory with the exception of less than 25. Toliver called that feat “pretty significant” considering all the damage that happened. He thanked RMU line crews for their work in the first two days of the outage before mutual aid and contractor crews could be brought in to help them finish repairs. 

After inquiring with its insurance about submitting a claim for the storm damage expenses, the city will opt to pay the $516,236 out of pocket as an emergency expenditure utilizing the cash it keeps on hand in case of storms. The city chose that route due to an insurance claim’s potential impact on insurance rates or its ability to get insured in the future. 

Toliver said the storm had a “substantial impact” on RMU’s inventory of electric infrastructure and equipment, including poles, cross arms, braces and insulators.

“We were running out of everything,” Toliver said. “We had some of the municipal utilities in the area help us with inventory and we'll replace their inventory as we stock back up. We're still fighting some challenges of being low on inventory. We ordered a lot after the storm. Within the first 16 hours after the storm, our inventory here for most of our day-to-day items was pretty well cleared out. I'm happy with our relationship with our vendor and they came in and worked on our stock. Dealing with what we dealt with, obviously our day-to-day supplies were depleted very quickly. The amount of help we had from other utilities and our vendors was great. We got parts delivered the next day or were able to go pick them up. For as bad of a situation as we were in, it went very well.”

RMU line crews had mutual aid help come in from municipal linemen from Batavia and St. Charles, along with crews from contractor Michels Power. Those were the only crews available due to other utilities throughout the state dealing with their own issues from the storm.

Toliver said RMU had worked with Michels Power in the past and credited all the crews that helped with the mid-March outage.

“It was a lot for our crews,” Toliver said. “Our crews know our territory, so they had to lead the mutual aid and contractor crews around and show them what to do and how we do it. We were very thankful to get the help we did. St. Charles chose not to bill us because they wanted to be neighborly. We greatly appreciate that and would love to pay that favor back if they ever need help in the future.”

The Friday the storm hit saw 75-degree temperatures. As crews worked on restoring the system to normal over the weekend, they saw windy conditions continue, and a snowfall hit on Sunday morning. That caused issues such as stuck line trucks and poor visibility. 

“We had trucks stuck because we left out trucks overnight holding poles up and stuff like that,” Toliver said. “It ended up becoming a totally different set of challenges. We dealt with wind and it was still windy afterwards and we had to hold things together. Then we got snow and moisture and trucks got stuck. Visibility was poor for a while. When you have multiple crews working on a line that are relying on visibility between each other, they can't even see the next crew because the snow is coming down so hard. That posed another challenge. It was from one extreme to another.”

RMU Assistant Superintendent Jay Mulholland said that local hotels and restaurants came through and helped RMU be able to house and feed the visiting line crews while they were in Rochelle working. A total of 34 linemen were working in the area, with eight from RMU, six from Batavia and St. Charles, and 20 from Michels Power, plus RMU’s support staff.

The RMU generation plant was the first to respond to the outage by providing power to the center part of town (3,000 customers) while linemen were figuring out how to pick up the main arteries of power. 

Toliver said he believes RMU was prepared for the storm in terms of procedure and cash on hand. $516,236 makes up 1.3 percent of the city's electric department’s total cash on hand. Toliver said he did not feel prepared for it with inventory, which can be tough to manage due to not knowing what area of the electric system would be hit and what would be needed. 

“We try to be as prepared as we can and keep enough inventory on hand to get through a smaller event, but it's hard to prepare for a large event like this and have enough inventory on hand because of the cost of the materials,” Toliver said. “As bad of an event as it was and as much destruction as we had in that short time frame, it went as well as it possibly could have as far as rebuilding.”