Remembering the Ice Storm of 1994

For those members of the DEC employee family who were working at the Co-op in February of 1994, the “once in a century" ice storm that hit our service territory is a core career memory. Thursday, February 8 marked the 30th anniversary of this devastating weather event, that at its peak left 40,000 members in the dark. For ten days, DEC employees - both in the field and in the office - worked tirelessly to help restore electricity to the people and places we power. Before the advent of the innovative technologies and systems the Co-op utilizes today, many parts of that restoration process looked vastly different than what we are used to now.

A perfect example is how the Co-op processed incoming member outage calls. Today, members have three available methods of reporting an outage - online through their Smarthub account, through the mobile app or by calling the office. In 1994, the Internet was not a mainstream resource. At that time, the Co-op still used a manual switchboard system to transfer calls. Employees working in what we now refer to as the call center and payment processing departments were tasked with taking the numerous outage calls coming through, many of which would become repeat calls as the weight of the ice on poles and limbs across our system would often damage lines that had only just been repaired. As the calls came in, employees hand wrote individual report tickets, which were regularly collected by employees designated as “runners.” The runners would deliver these tickets to dispatch, where the on-call supervisor would organize them into piles based on location spread out across one large table. The goal was to focus restoration efforts in the hardest hit areas, but with the constant repeated damage to the lines, prioritization was nearly impossible.

Crews out on the lines were working 12-hour days - some up to 16-hour days! - braving cold and dangerous conditions. On average, it would take about four hours to replace a broken pole - of which DEC had 500 during the height of the storm. With inches of ice layered over equipment, the process took considerably longer. With the help of crews from nearby neighboring utilities and those from sister co-ops in neighboring states, the final lights were turned back on February 19. 

The stories that came out about the time spent working through the Ice Storm of '94 have become the stuff of Co-op legend. Thanks to the commitment and perseverance of our Co-op family, our system was restored, and today we honor their commitment by continuing to develop new and innovative ways of maintaining and improving member reliability.