Co-op Voices
Joining Members to Weather the Storm
Over the years I’ve shared some of the memories and lessons from my 38-plus years in this industry. I occasionally take a proverbial stroll down memory lane, and often get lost in memories and conversations about people or events that defined a particular era in my life. For the era that is 2011, those memories will be clearly defined by storms.
Robert Hance
We’ve all seen and experienced the wrath of Mother Nature. I’ve walked with members through a yard full of debris that represented what was left of their home following a destructive tornado, and witnessed huge farmhouses and outbuildings flattened by straight-line winds.
I’ve seen trucks and trailers overturned, large irrigation systems curled around downed power lines, and rows of massive pine trees literally flattened under the weight of ice.
What’s unique about 2011 is that I saw all this, and more, within the first seven months of the year.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time in this industry can share horror stories about severe storms, but I can’t recall a year that has brought such devastation in such a short time.
As I write this, we’re coming off yet another storm-related outage. It seems minor in comparison to several earlier ones, as it left much less damage and service was fully restored within 15 hours. But it was another act of Mother Nature that removed from many something that has become a basic life necessity: electricity.
Our members get frustrated and we get frustrated. There’s no denying that. Under severe circumstances like what we’ve experienced over and over again this year, there is just no way to get the power back up fast enough to satisfy them, or us.
And communication is always a challenge, as we simply do not have the phone line capacity to handle the influx of calls when thousands are suddenly left in the dark.
Any time a major storm looms, we brace for the reality of what could result. When reality hits, I am often humbled and amazed by the spirit that kicks in from all involved. Many of our members, in the midst of their own power-less reality, reach out to our employees with words and act of kindness and encouragement.
We literally received hundreds of notes, emails, Facebook posts and comments from our members this year thanking our employees and commending them for their work. Those actions do not go unnoticed.
In the midst of these situations, many of our own employees are leaving their homes and families in the dark in order to take members’ calls and work under terrible outdoor conditions in order to restore members’ service. Their support and encouragement are often the very things that keep us going.
We are imperfect people dealing with imperfect systems and processes. After every major event, we evaluate those as a team and brainstorm ways to make them better.
We obviously can’t control Mother Nature and the havoc she causes, but we can evaluate line clearance measures and other system improvements to minimize the impact. We can’t control thousands of people attempting to call in an outage only to receive a fast busy signal, but we can look at other options and methods of communication.
In the face of outage adversity, the cooperative and our members weather the storm together. We thank them for their patience and encouragement, and convey our best wishes for a quiet and storm-free remainder of 2011.
Robert Hance is president and CEO of Midwest Energy Cooperative, Cassopolis, Mich.
Tags: Co-op Voices, Response, Weather