Local co-op assists to help with cruel trick

Halloween has been known to be the source of some pretty good pranks over the years.
Long-time residents of southeastern Minnesota may recall the great Halloween ice storm of 1991 when power was knocked out in some parts for a week or more. I remember working as a cub reporter at KAAL-TV when the station got knocked off the air.
During that same year, the Twin Cities area and other parts of Minnesota faced the Halloween Blizzard, which dumped up to almost 37 inches in Duluth.
Fast forward 33 years to this Halloween when we got our first taste of winter. Folks in McLeod County ended up with perhaps the cruelest trick of all when their power went out. Heavy wet snow accumulated on the lines causing them to sag and eventually slap or bounce back. It resulted in many locations with outages from tangled lines.
My mother was one of those whose power went out around 12 p.m. She was just ready to crawl into bed in a chilled home when the power finally came back on around 10 p.m. She was one of more than 1,700 residents experiencing widespread outages. It took as long as 36 hours in some places to bring back the power.
The weight of the snow broke trees that fell onto the lines, according to McLeod Cooperative Power Association. At the same time, it broke poles and transformers and caused the lines to twist together across the entire system, all within a few hours.
While mom had to sit in the cold for only 10 hours (seems like an eternity when you’re the one facing the situation), she still was not impressed with Mother Nature’s awful Halloween prank.
Steele-Waseca Co-op Electric based in Owatonna was one of several area cooperatives that came to the aid of McLeod Co-op. Dan Meier, operations manager at Steele-Waseca, said on average they are called to help other co-ops two or three times a year.
“We have a great working relationship with all the co-ops across the state and often share resources,” Meier said. “The request for help came from their operations personnel to ours,” he added.
Meier pointed out how it’s imperative for co-ops to share resources across the state and on a national level. He said Minnesota co-ops cover 85% of the land mass and serve 1.7 million members. It is also one of the seven cooperative principles: cooperation among cooperatives.
In McLeod County, heavy, wet snow turned to ice on the lines, requiring manual clearing which then led to increases in restoration time. Even when the snow falls off naturally, it can cause the lines to slap together, creating yet another outage.
It’s important that we support the work of our line workers and power line technicians. They regularly work high off the ground and around high-voltage electricity, so the job is dangerous. I think we all take having power for granted. We wouldn’t enjoy life without the incredible sacrifices made by these men and women.
October was National Co-op Month. I want to recognize and bring awareness to the value cooperatives bring to their members and communities. Thanks to all our cooperatives for what they do.
I’m not really superstitious, but I’m really beginning to wonder about Halloween. Obviously, Mother Nature doesn’t hold back with going in hot pursuit of flexing her muscles on this haunted day.