OTTUMWA —
One week after straight-line winds and rain pummeled the city, Ottumwans are returning to normal as remaining debris is carted away.
“It’s an ongoing tabulation of dollars,” said Tom Rodgers, city public information officer. “Public Works crews are clearing right of ways, Parks still has a lot of cleanup ahead of them. The pickup and cleanup process takes awhile.”
Alliant Energy spokesperson Ryan Stensland said everything was pretty much wrapped up in terms of restoration efforts late Monday afternoon.
“We spent the rest of the week going back, doing some additional repairs, making some more permanent repairs where we needed to, cleanup, tree trimming in spots and putting the final touches on that,” Stensland said.
In the past few days there were less than a dozen customers waiting to get electricity, “but those are wrapped up for the most part now, too,” he said.
“We’re very appreciative of the community, their patience and helping us get the power back on,” Stensland said. “We just hope that we don’t have to go through that again for awhile. Some have said the damage was worse in spots than what was seen in the ice storm [in winter 2007-08].”
But if customers come across any remaining issues, they can call Alliant at 1-800-ALLIANT (1-800-255-4268).
Rodgers said while no further plans have been announced as of yet, the tree dump area at 550 Gateway Drive will remain open through the weekend.
Looking back on the 2007-08 ice storm, Rodgers said the storm hit on Dec. 10, 2007 and the tree dump remained open through April 20, 2008.
“And curbside pickup didn’t happen until March,” Rodgers said, putting a perspective on how long cleanup can actually take following one of Mother Nature’s angry outbursts.
But Stensland was thankful for the crews that came from across the state to help with the restoration effort and worked around the clock to get the power back on.
“We’re always doing emergency planning and restoration planning and we have a pretty comprehensive plan in terms of how we respond, but what we’ve found in these situations is every storm restoration effort is unique and there’s a new challenge that comes up,” he said. “We drill it quite a bit and the crews are very experienced in how to handle these kinds of things.”
Wapello County Supervisor Greg Kenning said the supervisors are still trying to contact the company that originally produced the Chief Wapello statue to determine what should be done next after the Chief was knocked off his lookout point atop the Wapello County Courthouse during last Saturday’s storm.
“Our first mission is to see if we can put it back together,” Kenning said. “If that can’t be done, we’ll start thinking about how to replace it.”
But that could be really expensive, he said, as another monument made of the same material near Munterville, about 15 miles west of Ottumwa, cost several thousand dollars — and it sits on the ground.
“[Chief Wapello] has to withstand a lot of different weather,” Kenning said.
Despite a lack of electricity and extreme heat, the Southern Prairie chapter of the American Red Cross didn’t see many coming in for help, said Brandon Holstrom, response coordinator for the chapter.
“We did end up helping three families with medical needs,” Holstrom said, though none was heat-related. “Due to the fact they had no electricity, they had medical issues and we helped them out.”
It’s really about people calling and asking for assistance, Holstrom said, but most went to friends and family for shelter and to cool off.
The Red Cross had a cooling center open at Evans Middle School Sunday and Monday but it was not used, he said, and they also had a shelter on stand-by Saturday night following the storm.
There were also four volunteers handing out bottles of water throughout the city on Sunday while Ottumwans were outside cleaning up debris surrounding their homes.
There are plans in place when things like this happen, Holstrom said, and Red Cross volunteers were all willing to help, including several volunteers who were themselves affected by the storm.
“The problem is there was no electricity anywhere so it was a hit and miss thing,” Holstrom said. “We lucked out that Evans did have power.”
Local News
June 23, 2012
Getting back to normal
A week later, storm restoration efforts press forward
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