Gideon: Being Prepared and Receiving Assistance in an Emergency Brad Rayburn, MRWA Circuit Rider On the afternoon of May 4, 2020, a strong storm ripped through southeast Missouri that left thousands of people without power and water. The City of Gideon and surrounding areas had extensive storm damage, downed power lines, uprooted trees, and structural damage to many homes and businesses. At the peak of the outages, it was reported that nearly 13,000 people were without power. According to the National Weather Service wind speeds reached an estimated 100 mph, but no tornado was reported with the storm. Missouri Rural Water Association assisted the City of Gideon with restoring power to its well with a generator. Without power or a backup generator, the city’s residents lost water in the early morning of May 5. MRWA’s Emergency Response Coordinator Eric Fuchs was already aware of the storm damage and had been making phone calls to acquire generators through the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA.) SEMA and MRWA have a partnership to assist Missouri water and wastewater systems during a natural disaster. Fuchs located a SEMA generator housed in Sikeston and by 11:00 am I had the generator delivered to Gideon. Along with the generator, Jimmy Harrell, with the Sikeston Fire Department came along and aided with hooking up the generator.
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Gideon already had electricians onsite, so I assisted with connecting the generator to the manual transfer/disconnect box located outside of the well house. MRWA highly recommends that every water/wastewater system has an electrician install a manual transfer/disconnect box at all water sources and lift stations for ease of connecting a generator in case of power outages. Gideon had done just that, but it had not been opened since its installation in 2010. One of the lugs inside would not loosen, making it impossible to connect all four wires from the generator. Lesson #1- This was not hard to repair, but with all the storm damage, traveling a few miles to the hardware store took much longer than normal. It is important to check the manual transfer/disconnect box periodically to ensure that everything is in working order. Once power was restored to the well, most of the residents in Gideon had water. Unfortunately, a large tree had uprooted and broke a water main. The appropriate valves were shut off, so the main could be repaired. With the rainfall from the storm and the water that had leaked from the main, it took a couple of hours to pump the water away from the leak. During that time, I borrowed
