Remembering the Ice Age

Last December, the basement of Rodger Goodhead's Maple Ridge house was more full than it had ever been. He and eight other people, including a 3-week-old baby and three people older than 90, as well as seven dogs and five cats, huddled in front of Goodhead's fireplace, trying to stay warm despite the biting cold outside.

Like many Tulsans, Goodhead lost power for a full week after an ice storm hit Dec. 9, and the generator he kept in the garage barely lit a couple of light bulbs and kept the freezer cold to preserve food that they couldn't cook. They got by instead on oatmeal and soup Goodhead's wife cooked in a fondue pot.

"It was miserable," he said. "People mainly trying to stay warm. We told a lot of old war stories."

The storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses for as much as two weeks, but it probably also knocked out the possibility of similar outages this year, utility officials say. As freezing rain met tree limbs, it coated them in ice, adding weight that eventually brought many branches and trees tumbling to the ground, sometimes snapping power lines on the way down. All those downed trees and limbs were bad news last year, but the good news is that they can't fall again.

"Mother Nature has done a good job of thinning things out," Public Service Company of Oklahoma spokesman Ed Bettinger said, noting that a June thunderstorm took down many limbs that had been weakened by the ice storm. "If the very same [storm] occurred [this year], we'd probably be in pretty good shape."

Tulsa had not experienced such a severe ice storm since 1987, he said, and many trees matured and their limbs grew long during the 20 years that followed. The severity of power outages, therefore, increases with the length of time that elapses between major storms.

Last year's storm brought 2.7 million cubic yards of Tulsa trees and branches to the ground, lining streets and piling up in yards and parks. The city paid contractors $16 million to collect the debris.

Nearly 107,000 homes and businesses lost power on Dec. 9, and that number grew to nearly 220,000 the next day. By Dec. 11, power had been restored to all but 25,000 customers, but some remained without electricity until Christmas Eve, despite PSO recruiting 5,000 workers from 11 states to help with the recovery efforts.

People huddled inside their homes, battling cold temperatures, and some who tried creative solutions to their heating problems ended up burning down their houses or poisoning themselves with fumes.

Nine people statewide died in house fires; two died of carbon monoxide poisoning and two died of hypothermia. Additionally, 16 people died in storm-related vehicle accidents.

Defrost Mode

PSO is not simply counting on the thinned-out vegetation to prevent major outages this year, but it hasn't made drastic changes since last year either. Bettinger said the company started a "reliability enhancement program" in January 2005 and is making progress, but it's a long and costly process.

One of the program's two main goals is to trim trees that are near power lines, but Bettinger said no amount of tree-trimming would have prevented the outages Tulsans experienced last year.

Last December, the basement of Rodger Goodhead's Maple Ridge house was more full than it had ever been. He and eight other people, including a 3-week-old baby and three people older than 90, as well as seven dogs and five cats, huddled in front of Goodhead's fireplace, trying to stay warm despite the biting cold outside.

Like many Tulsans, Goodhead lost power for a full week after an ice storm hit Dec. 9, and the generator he kept in the garage barely lit a couple of light bulbs and kept the freezer cold to preserve food that they couldn't cook. They got by instead on oatmeal and soup Goodhead's wife cooked in a fondue pot.

"It was miserable," he said. "People mainly trying to stay warm. ... We told a lot of old war stories."

The storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses for as much as two weeks, but it probably also knocked out the possibility of similar outages this year, utility officials say. As freezing rain met tree limbs, it coated them in ice, adding weight that eventually brought many branches and trees tumbling to the ground, sometimes snapping power lines on the way down. All those downed trees and limbs were bad news last year, but the good news is that they can't fall again.

"Mother Nature has done a good job of thinning things out," Public Service Company of Oklahoma spokesman Ed Bettinger said, noting that a June thunderstorm took down many limbs that had been weakened by the ice storm. "If the very same [storm] occurred [this year], we'd probably be in pretty good shape."

Tulsa had not experienced such a severe ice storm since 1987, he said, and many trees matured and their limbs grew long during the 20 years that followed. The severity of power outages, therefore, increases with the length of time that elapses between major storms.

Last year's storm brought 2.7 million cubic yards of Tulsa trees and branches to the ground, lining streets and piling up in yards and parks. The city paid contractors $16 million to collect the debris.

Nearly 107,000 homes and businesses lost power on Dec. 9, and that number grew to nearly 220,000 the next day. By Dec. 11, power had been restored to all but 25,000 customers, but some remained without electricity until Christmas Eve, despite PSO recruiting 5,000 workers from 11 states to help with the recovery efforts.

People huddled inside their homes, battling cold temperatures, and some who tried creative solutions to their heating problems ended up burning down their houses or poisoning themselves with fumes.

Nine people statewide died in house fires; two died of carbon monoxide poisoning and two died of hypothermia. Additionally, 16 people died in storm-related vehicle accidents.

Defrost Mode

PSO is not simply counting on the thinned-out vegetation to prevent major outages this year, but it hasn't made drastic changes since last year either. Bettinger said the company started a "reliability enhancement program" in January 2005 and is making progress, but it's a long and costly process.

One of the program's two main goals is to trim trees that are near power lines, but Bettinger said no amount of tree-trimming would have prevented the outages Tulsans experienced last year.

"The problem in the ice storm was that we had lots of trees that just fell from way outside our lines," he said. "When we go in to trim and remove trees along power lines, we always try to get the maximum clearance we can get ... [but] people are obviously sensitive to the amount of tree removal they will let us do in their yards, and it's not reasonable for us to ask to trim or remove a tree that's far back from the line."

The reliability enhancement program's other main goal is to bury about 800 miles of neighborhood power lines that are currently hard to reach or have been hit hard by outages in recent years. Those lines typically run above the backyards of homes in older neighborhoods that lack alleys and therefore require access to people's homes. Access is further complicated by newly built swimming pools and garden sheds in many instances, making access "extremely problematic, if not impossible," Bettinger said.

Burying lines is slow and expensive, though: PSO spends about $700,000 to bury one mile of neighborhood lines, and the 800-mile project is on pace for completion in 20 to 25 years. About 95 miles of lines have been buried so far. PSO has applied to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for permission to raise its rates 8.9 percent, which would enable PSO to double its annual expenditures on undergrounding from $20 million to $40 million and cut the timeline in half. PSO said its rates would still be at or below national averages if the rate increase were approved.

Reviewing the Situation

One of the areas hit hardest by the ice storm was Goodhead's Maple Ridge neighborhood, which had been targeted for undergrounding the previous summer. But PSO did not go through with the project because some residents objected to PSO placing green transformer boxes on the ground in front of their houses, which is necessary when lines are buried.

"This small group of green-box naysayers were so vocal and really kind of ugly to the spokespeople at [PSO], and basically [PSO] said, 'This isn't worth it. We're going to go on down the road,'" said Goodhead, who is president of the neighborhood association. "I would say a great many of those that were the vocal ones rethought their decision [after the ice storm] and wish that PSO would have been able to go ahead with the project."

Despite the aesthetic objection to green boxes, many people statewide called for burial of all power lines in the aftermath of the 2007 ice storm because underground lines are immune to harsh weather and falling trees. The Corporation Commission, however, estimated burial of all power lines could cost as much as $57.5 billion and take decades to complete. To pay for that expense, the average electric customer's monthly bill would be increased by $80, and those bills would not come down again for 30 years.

"The reliability benefits that would result from undergrounding are uncertain, and there appears to be little economic justification or general customer support for paying the required premiums," the Corporation Commission said in a June report. "It appears ... that there is a large gap between the public's perception of what it should cost for undergrounding and what it actually costs. When faced with the real costs of undergrounding, it appears many individuals prefer to keep their overhead service and their money in their pockets."

With above-ground power lines, there is always a chance of severe weather causing mass outages, but power failures on the scale experienced last December are rare. More than 29,000 customers experienced power outages due to severe thunderstorms Oct. 17, 2007, but there were no outages in 2006 that affected more than 20,000 PSO customers. In 2005, three outages affected more than 34,000 customers each, and in 2004 there was a 23,000-customer outage and a 63,000-customer outage.

Otherwise, Ready for Winter

In case of a storm, the City of Tulsa has stockpiled 8,600 tons of salt and 1,000 tons of a sand-salt mixture to be spread on city streets as well as 3,000 gallons of liquid de-icer. The materials will be applied by up to 119 city employees prepared to work 12-hour shifts around-the-clock, if necessary, using 52 truck-mounted sand-salt spreaders, 34 truck-mounted snow plows, two motor graders to be used as plows and one truck-mounted liquid de-icer spraying unit, according to a city press release.

"Last winter's ice storm drove home the need to be prepared for winter weather," Mayor Kathy Taylor said in the release. "Our Public Works Department stands ready to make our streets safer for driving when ice or snow arrives, and our Police, Fire and other emergency response agencies are all ready to meet the needs of citizens."

The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a slightly warmer and slightly wetter winter than usual for Tulsa, but the organization does not predict the likelihood of major storms beyond 14 days. Nonetheless, it's a good idea to stock up on food and other essentials for the cold winter months, as we never know what the season might bring.

"For the foreseeable future, we should be in pretty good shape, but never say 'never,' because Mother Nature will always win out," Bettinger said. "One thing you have to appreciate in this business is that Mother Nature will always win."