“On Friday, Oct. 4 outages began in the Rapid City area in the morning and in the Wall and Enning areas in late afternoon,” said West River Electric manager of member services Veronica Kusser. “The high winds and heavy snow limited visibility and made it impossible to stay ahead of outages, although our linemen were out on Friday trying. “Then, at about 8 p.m. WAPA (Western Area Power Administration), who provides the main transmission and substation capacity into our system, lost their New Un-
derwood substation. At 10:30 p.m., WAPA transmission structures broke along the Cheyenne River near Wasta, darkening the rest of our service area. Power remained out to every one of our 16,000 members through the night. Not a single meter was turning.” Line crews and stranded motorists they had rescued throughout the day, as well as some office staff, ended up spending Friday night at the Rapid City WREA office due to the weather conditions, which improved little by Saturday morning. “There were 4 inches of ice on the lines
Saturday morning, and nothing we could do but wait for WAPA, who arrived and restored power to the Wall area by noon. With the treacherous road conditions, it took them until about 8:30 p.m. to reach the New Underwood substation and restore power to the Rapid City area, with the aid of Pennington County Emergency Management, and the Department of Transportation,” said Kusser. Sunday morning brought a larger, more coordinated effort to restore power to the thousands of WREA customers still with-
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