Northwest Iowa — At the outage’s peak early Thursday, around 5500 Lyon and Sioux County MidAmerican Energy customers were without power. But efforts continue to bring systems and customers back online. As of mid-day on Friday, only about 260 customers were still in the dark.
That from MidAmerican Energy’s spokesman, Geoff Greenwood. He tells us what happened.
He says when ice coats the lines and strong winds blow, the lines can bounce and snap, or even take the power pole with it. And that can start a domino effect where several poles in a row can go down.
According to Greenwood, they have focused a tremendous amount of effort on that area.
He says they’re working with the Lyon Rural Electric Coop to get service restored. According to Greenwood, there may be around a dozen customers whose power will be out over the weekend.
Greenwood tells us that in the Hull and Orange City area there may be about two dozen customers in the same boat over the weekend, and he says the same situation applies with offering generators. Greenwood says they also had some customers out in O’Brien County as well, but there were fewer of them and they were more isolated.
