A Wind Storm to Remember
A Wind Storm to Remember
On Thursday evening, September 29, a powerful storm with winds gusting to 69 mph slammed the Island. The entire Island was hit hard and power was cut off from the mainland. According to Robert Cornell, manager of the W.I. Electric Co-op, it was “the most storm damage, and the most widespread” he’s seen since he’s been with the Co-op. The strong winds uprooted trees, split trees in half, broke off branches and downed power lines in every section of the Island.
The Co-op crew of three was called out at 8:30 p.m. Thursday evening and worked non-stop for the next 24 hours. Cornell himself didn’t stop to sleep until 7:30 Saturday morning, and after 3-4 hours of rest was back on the job. The Town crew, police officers Tyler McGrane and Gary Schultz, and members of the fire department assisted in removing downed trees and debris from the roads so the Co-op crew could get in and work on the power lines. Cornell said they’d get one area of the Island taken care of and move on to another area only to get called back to the previous one because of another tree and line down. They had to return to the Green Bay Road area five times.
As of Monday morning, October 3, they were down to only two residences without power, compared to thousands as of Sunday night in Door County. And this with an electric crew of only three people. Cornell gave this interview while checking out the damage in Door County and reported seeing a crew from Madison Gas & Electric working to help out. “WPS crews came from everywhere to help restore power in the aftermath of the storm; it was a Chilton crew that got power restored from the mainland to the Island.”
Cornell reported that there are “still lots of secondary jobs to take care of,” such as the property of this writer where a huge, old maple split in half, uprooted and cracked the ironwood next to it on its way down, and then both came to rest on a third tree and the power line to the house. Upon inspection by Cornell the situation was deemed stable and safe for the time being, and there were many more urgent situations to be dealt with first. He also suspects the Co-op will receive more calls over Columbus Day Weekend when seasonal residents come up for the weekend and possibly discover damage to their properties.
Apparently many have questioned why the Island generator wasn’t used to bring back power more quickly. Cornell stated that “when you have a storm of that magnitude and you want to bring the engines [of the Island generator] back on, it can be very dangerous. There were power lines down all over the Island,” and restoring electricity through the generator would have meant a lot of live, downed wires. The damaged lines had to be repaired first for the safety of Island residents and their homes.
The Observer would like to thank, on behalf of the community, the members of the Town crew, police and fire departments for their hard work assisting with the clean-up, and especially the Co-op crew Robert Cornell, Randy Sorensen and Don Johnson for their tireless efforts to safely restore power to our homes and businesses.
by Lori Goodwin
