The year 2008 will long be remembered for the ice storm that plagued most of Southern Illinois with some areas recording over one inch of ice.  The ice storm that began on February 11th and continued on into the 12th is likely the worst ice storm on record in your Cooperative's 70 year history.

Your Cooperative began receiving calls from members the night of February 11th and by the early morning of February 12th; there were approximately 11,700 members without power.  At that time, all of the Cooperative employees were working on the restoration process and additional Illinois Cooperative crews and contract crews were called in to assist in the restoration process.

The first priority was to restore the damaged 161,000 volt and 69,000 volt transmission lines that energize your Cooperatives distribution substations from the generation plant located at the Lake Of Egypt.  These transmission outages resulted in loss of power to 18 of the Cooperative's 35 substations.  In order to get these transmission lines energized, line personnel must inspect the numerous miles of transmission line, locate the areas of damage and then begin repairing the facilities.  The road conditions along with numerous downed trees across the roads made this process very difficult and time consuming.  In order to accelerate the restoration process, a helicopter was utilized to fly the transmission lines and report the areas of damage so line personnel could travel directly to the areas that needed repair.  This allowed the line personnel to focus on repairing facilities and restoring power in lieu of clearing roads and inspecting lines.

By Wednesday, February 13th, all 18 of the substations were re-energized and approximately 6,000 members had regained electrical service.  All of your Cooperative employees along with 140 outside line personnel and forestry personnel continued the restoration process by repairing your Cooperative's distribution facilities that included some 1,700 miles of distribution lines.  These employees worked at least 18 hours per day in very extreme conditions in order to restore power to members.

As the week continued, your Cooperative focused on re-energizing lines that would restore power to as many members as possible.  As the weekend approached, your Cooperative began restoring power to devastated secondary lines that proved to be very time consuming.  The devastation in some areas was so great and the number of downed trees so extreme that it may take 3-4 forestry crews and 2-3 line crews working over 4 hours just to restore service to five homes on a 2 mile line.  Your Cooperative restored power to the last residence on Sunday evening, February 17th.

At the conclusion of this storm, I would like to thank all of you as Cooperative members and owners for your understanding of the magnitude of this extreme storm, your patience, your assistance and your thank you letters that have been received.  I would also like to thank all of the hard working and dedicated employees, other Illinois Cooperative employees and contractors who made this restoration possible. 

As many of you already know all of my articles normally end with the slogan "We'll keep the lights on for you."  However given the magnitude of this severe ice storm, my slogan this month will be

"We turned the lights back on for you".