RSS Feed |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Worst damage in 60 years slams Lacreek Electric area
"The longer we went without power, the more people came to the school for food and a warm place out of the storm," said Phyllis Wilcox, unofficial community leader during the storm, "pretty soon we had 24 families and 128 people using Crazy Horse School as a shelter, then it was 32 families and close to 200 people."
"Look I'm telling you, they say no travel, they say stay off the roads," said KILI Radio personnel to the many callers who were calling about road conditions all day Thursday, "public safety says all roads are closed and if you go out you may be arrested." Many tested the roads, though, quite a few were stuck and stranded on the roads making it more difficult to clear the roads when the storm started breaking up on Friday. "We are still recommending no travel Friday morning, we had our snow plows out Thursday and they all got stuck in the snow," said Jeff Whelan, OST transportation director Friday morning in response to many residents who were attempting to travel, "give us an opportunity to get our plows up and out on the road before you travel."
"This is the worst storm damage LaCreek has had to deal with in all of the time I've worked with the co-op and it just might be the worst in the 60 year history of the cooperative," said Wayne Sterkel, general manager of LaCreek Electric in Martin, "we lost between 600 and 700 poles; we had storm crews from other parts of the state head this way only to struggle to get here because of the roads but we have been working non-stop to get as many people back on line as soon a possible." The recovery operation has been overwhelming, according to Sterkel. Storm crews have come from Bon Homme, Charles Mix, Sioux Valley, Winner, East River, Cherry/Todd, KBR and Loupe of Nebraska and Prairie Energy Cooperative of western Iowa to help along with two local contractors, 15 local workers, 11 members of the National Guard, Doug O'Bryan Construction and using tractors and equipment from local ranchers and farmers.
"We built a line from Wanblee to the river for Rural Water just a year ago, we lost 70 poles on that line alone," said Sterkel, "and now we are starting to lose some lines to ice-when ice starts to melt and say it drops off a bottom line, the line bounces up and hits the upper line causing an arc and sometimes that will blow a breaker switch, we lost power to Hisle and Upper Cut Meat in that manner." Late last week, Governor Mike Rounds declared a State of Emergency in South Dakota. On Monday, Nov. 10 John Steele OST president declared a state of emergency for Pine Ridge Reservation.
As of Tuesday, there were still 1,250 meters still out. Sterkel feltthat most everyone would be back on within a week. By Tuesday night, there were two families left at Little Wound School but requests were still being made for donations of canned food, water, blankets, diapers, wood, propane, lamp oil, candles, flashlights, batteries, matches, kerosene, gloves, toilet paper, baby wipes and soap. An emergency operations center was established at Crazy Horse School and would eventually move to the CAP office. Schools closed Thursday and Friday. The Teca Wacipi Okolakicike powwow at Loneman was postponed until Friday Nov. 14, the Vet's powwow in Batesland was moved to Nov. 14, 15 at the Bill C.Bear gym, Crazy
No one has any estimate on the cost of all the storm damage. If the president declares South Dakota in a State of Emergency, FEMA would step in. We would be able to get 75 per cent of our costs covered by FEMA and another 10 per cent covered by the stae added Sterkel, that's if we dot all of our i's and cross all of our t's.
Although many reservation residents felt that clearing the road took too Long; that getting electricity back on took way too long, most tribal workers in transportation and law enforcement and with LaCreek Electric were doing everything possible to get life back to normal.
|
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
)
)
)
)
)
)
