Thanks to HEA!
by Jenny Chissus
Like everyone in the Seldovia area, we experienced a power outage on Tuesday – September 4, around 4pm. Unlike the rest of the community of Seldovia, Port Graham and Nanwalek – our home was not saved by the most awesome Willard Generation Plant here in Seldovia.
Why, you ask? Yes, we are within the city limits of Seldovia – right on Main Street, and usually we are happy recipients of the temporary power of the generation plant. That would not be our good fortune this day, as the amazing wind that hit the peninsula went after our ancient cotton wood tree in the front lawn and took a 150+ pound limb from the top of the tree – and threw it 50 feet across our yard to slam into the major power pole in our yard, and slide down the power line, pulling the meter box right off our exterior side of the house!
That is not the end of the story – by far! It was just around 4pm and I was coming home from interviewing our new teacher at SBE, and had stopped at the Seldovia Conference Center to take photos of the Seldovia Bay full of white caps like I’ve never seen here! As I took these photos, I was practically blown over by these huge gusts of wind! Check out the trees in the second photo – it was blowing like crazy!
As my daughter and I pulled up into our driveway and stopped to get out, right then, we heard a crash, and our power line came down on top of the hood of the car and against the front windshield! Marina started to get out, and I yelled “Close the door, stay in the car!” and we backed away out from under the line and down the driveway to park across the street – only to find the whole street littered with pieces and parts of our cotton wood tree scattered everywhere!
Because I am often reporting on outages and such in the Gazette and deal with Joe directly, I immediately called Joe Gallagher with HEA to report our situation. (Normally, it is important to remember to immediately call the HEA line 235-8551 and dial #2 to report an outage or hazardous condition.) Joe had one of the dispatchers call us to confirm the situation and schedule the maintenance. Thank goodness for my cell, in spite of the power outage, I was still available by phone! According to Joe, there were quite a few issues on our side of the bay, and he wasn’t sure about the speed with which the crew would get to Seldovia because of the intense wind – flying was impossible, and traveling by sea wouldn’t be easy either!
I went down to Main Street to clean up the branches scattered everywhere. Just then my husband pulled up with the truck and trailer and we were able to completely fill the bed and the large trailer with the branches from the road – not including all the tree parts strewn across our lawns. The two cotton wood trees had lost so many branches – it was incredible that none had hit the home, yet!
Over the years we have removed 4 trees from the front and side of our property to protect our home and the HEA lines that come across our property in two locations. Being in this situation was something we had dreaded for a while! The huge limb that had taken out our power still lay across the line – just missing one of the Chainsaw Competition chainsaw carvings mounted in our yard! If the wind had taken that huge branch literally a foot away, it would have been ruined!
Joe called to say that the crew was on the way – leaving Homer on the pilot-boat at 5pm! Power was restored to the community by 5:00pm or so via the generation plant here in Seldovia – but due to our personal situation with our own power supply, we were still out of power.
The HEA repair team arrived at Jakolof Bay somewhere around 7pm ready to get started with the chaos on this side of the bay! The crew had some major repairs to complete out the road off of Jakolof and Lund – and finally arrived at our home at 1:00am! Donny and his crew came to the house and removed the tree branch from the line and verified that our line was still hot! Yikes – so glad nothing happened to anyone, as this was a dangerous situation. They disconnected power to our home and let us know that the lines were damaged too severely to do anything about it immediately. The crew left around 1:35am from our home to head back on the pilot-boat to Homer. Still in the dark…
The next morning we received a call from Joe to let us know that engineering would be contacting us regarding the situation as major repairs would be required. Cindy Frazier gave us a call and let us know that the crew was coming today, around 1:oopm on Grant to remedy our situation, and that a new pole was going to be installed.
The crew, Leon, Sam and Bryan arrived around 1:30pm to place the pole and disconnect all the wires that used to run to the damaged meter box. With the help of Jim Hopkins and his equipment, the crew was able to dig a new hole in our yard to place the pole and complete the job by 7:20pm! We had temporary power by 7:30pm!! 
We had our friend and local electrician John Johnson here to manage and coordinate the repairs and the final hook up to the home. We are now responsible to connect the line from the new pole to the house, but for now, the line runs across the lawn, up and over the roof and down into our breaker box!
I wanted to share this story (though it is not over yet) because we were very impressed with the speed and competency of HEA to be here so quickly to remedy our situation – in spite of horrible weather conditions and long hours. We were only 27.5 hours without power! We are also thankful to HEA for working with us to relocate the meter to a safer and more protected location. Although we are not excited about the repair bills that will soon be coming our way, we are thankful that we do not have the wires precariously dangling in front of our home and we are thankful for the unobstructed view of the bay! Lemonade out of lemons!
Thanks go out to all the crewmen who work in terrible weather and hazardous conditions to keep us all connected! We appreciate Joe and Cindy as well as the various dispatchers who coordinated the repairs! It was a crazy week for HEA with all the outages along the peninsula, and we are fortunate to have the support and speed of service in spite of the fact that we are off the road system! This episode sure made me thankful for the Gerry Willard Generation Plant in Seldovia that usually gets us all up and running within an hour!
I also wanted to say thanks to the many friends who stopped by with concern, offering to help us clean up the street when we were picking up branches, or rake and pick up branches off our lawn with us, inviting us to come over for dinner or shower at their home – to John Johnson who put another job on hold to come and manage our emergency situation, and Jim Hopkins who helped us out so much with his equipment and time to get the job done! We do feel grateful to be a part of a community that cares for and supports each other – so thank you!
Category: Business
Seldovia Time
Hello Gerald!
I’ve been trying to dig up that information for you – from what I “hear” it was around 60 or so – but I think we saw much bigger gusts – I’ll post what I discover for sure! I know Anchorage saw wind/gust speeds of over 100! Thanks for your comment!
Hello Jenny. You didn’t mention the wind/gust speed. I worked for a lot of years at Sandpoint, Ak and have seen quite a few wind storms there. I was on Guam a number of years ago when typhoon “Pongsonwa” hit with sustained winds of over 200 mph. Blew for twelve hrs straight. No power for a month.