Alaska ingenuity

To begin with, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in Alaska is huge -- 25,260 Square miles. That's bigger than a few states. It stretches from Anchorage in the South, almost to Glenallen in the north, west almost to Mount McKinley and east almost to Prince William Sound. A few more than 90,000 souls live in that expanse of sub-Arctic Alaska.

Downflow and vibration from the helicopter help clear wires.

Most of those people demand the usual amenities of polite society.  Most, because there is considerable wilderness in that acreage and there are still a few solid folks who live out there, including myself at one time in my life, where in one way or another they provide for themselves.

For the rest, people want running water, and indoor plumbing and things like electricity and telephone. Try to picture how much wire it takes to bring electricity and telephone service to an area that big.  The responsibility of providing that electricity belongs to a cooperative utility called the Matanuska Electric Association.

Then try to picture all those above-ground wires coated in a sometimes six-inch thick layer of heavy, wet snow frozen to them. That's what happened when a heavy overnight snow froze to the wires earlier this week. Power went out everywhere. Trees unable to hold the snow load fell and took down wires with them.  In other places just the weight of snow on the wires took them down.  Here and there across the wide winter wonderland power went out, not general outages as might be caused by a transformer, but isolated ones, caused by a line going to a subdivision, or along a single road, or one neighborhood.  It could have been compared to a fire, not a huge wildfire over thousands of acres but hundreds of little fires of as few as a couple of acres scattered here and there across 25,000 square miles.

Crews would repair one outage and be told there were seven new ones, all of those repairs made in sub-zero temperatures and often deep snow.

MEA kept members informed with a consistent flow of updates on the utility’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Here's a typical Facebook post:

Matanuska Electric Association December 22 via mobile

Eagle River, the Butte, Peters Creek, Big Lake, Long Lake, Willow, and Talkeetna are experiencing small outages at this time. Approximately 300 people total are currently affected.

Crews are out there working to get the lights back on as soon as possible.

If you're without power, please report it at...

To give you an idea of the expanse, it's more than 100 miles from Eagle River, an Anchorage suburb, to Talkeetna.

The crews were faced with two phases of the job, No. 1 of course was to repair the damage and restore the flow of electricity. No. 2 was to clear snow off the lines that hadn't broken yet. Nothing says how they were doing it at the beginning of the job, but it became obvious from the start that simply shaking thousands of miles of wire to knock the snow off wasn't going to work.

But, Alaskans are nothing if not creative and resourceful. Here's a Facebook post explaining the plan:

Matanuska Electric Association December 23 via mobile

Update:

The Willow/Hatcher Pass' lines still have a large portion of ice/snow on them and are proving very time consuming to shake off.

We are planning to shut down that line (affecting about 240 members, with 100 of these folks still without power at this time) from 11:30 a.m. until about 3:30 p.m.

We will be bringing in a helicopter to fly low over the lines and hopefully shake some of the snow and ice off, in hopes of getting everyone back on as soon as possible.

We will keep you updated as we learn more. Thank you for your patience.

The utility hired a helicopter which flew low along the wires, the downward air flow and vibration effectively knocking off the snow.

Post by Matanuska Electric Association.

Matanuska Electric Association Our helicopter plan knocked off the snow and ice from the lines in the Willow/Hatcher Pass area and although it didn't 100% resolve the issue, it's allowed us to isolate the trouble areas and we have contract clearing crews out there now. Hang tight Willow and Hatchers pass. You're all next!

December 23 at 3:47pm · Like · 1

Helicopter time is pretty expensive, but so is sending crews along every foot of line to knock the snow off, plus the helo saves a lot of time as well.

Overall, within about 24 hours the utility had everyone's power restored and for the most part had lines cleared to prevent any future outages. It was a huge undertaking when you think about it and MEA met the challenge and kept up their end of the deal to provide power to residents across that wide area of responsibility and applied some good old-fashioned Alaska resourcefulness in the process.

Someone over there also deserves a lot of credit for keeping people updated on Facebook and Twitter. In the past as far as notification and the possibility and timing of repairs, we were left pretty much in the dark.

MEA Twitter feed.