Aug 30, 2007 12:07 am US/Central
Good Question: Who Gets Their Power Back First?
by Ben Tracy
(WCCO)
It's been two days since storms pummeled the Twin Cities but some folks are still without power in the metro area.
"There was lightning and the thunder and the heavy rain and then we heard the power go off," said Joyce Groth, who lives in Bloomington, Minn. and was still without power as of Wednesday. "We opened up the curtains and half our tree is in the backyard and the power lines are hanging down."
More than 90,000 people lost their power earlier this week and Xcel Energy crews have been working 16 hour days to get it back on.
"It can be real frustrating for people and we understand that," said Craig Hayman, who runs Xcel Energy's Control Center where they monitor outages and dispatch crews.
"Currently, we need the customers to call or we don't know they're out," said Hayman.
So how does the power company decide who gets their power back first?
"We've seen lights on this side of the street, we've seen lights on the other side of the street but no lights here," said Ron Groth on Wednesday.
"We actually do it very systemically," said Hayman.
The first jobs they tackle are safety concerns such as live wires in yards or streets. After that, it's pretty simple.
"The biggest outage gets the attention first," said Hayman. "And then they work from the largest outage to the smallest and that helps us get the most lights on the fastest."
As of Tuesday morning, Xcel Energy had 1,300 problems to fix and just 135 crews to do the work.
"If you have three or four broken poles you're there all day," said Hayman. "You can be there all day getting the lights on to 25 to 50 people. That's what slows the progress."
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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