By MICHAEL STRAND

Salina Journal

It's not often that a clear, sunny day spells trouble, but Thursday's weather showed that, at least sometimes, a silver lining has its cloud.

The bright sun, along with temperatures around 40, brought lots of ice from power lines and tree limbs -- and brought down more power poles and lines with it.

At 4 p.m. Thursday, Westar was reporting 7,928 customers without power in Saline County, up from 7,563 at about the same time Wednesday. By 6 p.m., that number had dropped to 6,900.

DS&O Rural Electric Cooperative was reporting an even larger increase in outages, and general manager Don Hellwig was blaming the nice weather.

"We've lost a lot of customers this afternoon," he said Thursday.

At the beginning of the day, he was faced with about 3,200 customers being without power, but by midafternoon, that number had climbed to around 5,000, even as his crews continued to restore power.

Additionally, Hellwig said, the number of poles down in the DS&O service area was climbing.

"The pole count is still going up," he said. "We lost a bunch more today as the ice came off. I'll raise it to 400 and say that's conservative. Just two days ago, we were saying 200."

Melting ice problems

Hellwig said the ice melting causes a number of problems; it's been tripping breakers on lines, which often can be fixed relatively quickly by closing the breakers.

In other cases, though, as hundreds of pounds of ice fall, "the lines start to whip and bounce," he said. "And ice coming off the trees can take down a line, and (broken) branches that were frozen tight are coming down."

Looking on the bright side, Hellwig said, it's better for the ice to come off Thursday than still be there Friday, when north-central Kansas is expected to get 6 to 8 inches of snow.

"I guarantee you, had we put eight inches of snow on top of this (ice) we'd be a lot worse off," Hellwig said.

Even so, Hellwig said, "This is going to be a long-term thing. People who call and ask when it's coming back on, there aren't many who we'll tell it's this afternoon." Some customers will be off for weeks, he said, especially in the most sparsely populated areas.

The company's triage for prioritizing repairs starts with where power purchased from Westar enters the system, then to main feeder lines, then to farther into the network.

"It's then that customer counts start to matter," Hellwig said. "We're going to work where we can get the most people back for the hours expended."

Hellwig also urged people to be ready for the power to be restored, by checking to make sure that their meter and where power enters the house are in good condition.

Utilities won't restore power to a building if there's damage to the meter or wiring. They require that any damage be repaired by a licensed electrician; but it's possible power could be restored by fixing a break blocks away.

What could happen

In Tescott, Charles Matthews found out what can happen if the box where power enters a home is damaged.

The power had been off for a few hours at his home, and he was relieved when the power came back on about 11 p.m.

"My wife smelled smoke, and opened the furnace room door, and there was a wall of fire," Matthews said Thursday afternoon. "I reached in and turned the gas valve off."

Matthews, who is Tescott's mayor and has done electrical work, said he quickly found that the box going into his house had been damaged by ice tugging on the wires leading to his house, and lines got crossed.

"When the power came on, it shot 240 (volts) into a 110 system," he said, resulting not only in a burned-up furnace, but "it cooked a bunch of the wiring" and he's thinking the house might need to be rewired.

"We were fortunate we were here," he said. "The furnace is centrally located, and nobody would have seen it until flames were coming through the roof. We found out our smoke detectors work."

Culver gets a generator

Matthews said he'd been inspecting the city Thursday and estimated close to three-fourths of the city had power restored, and that the water and sewer lift stations were back in operations.

"We're probably luckier here in Tescott than in places like Culver," he said.

Culver had been without power to pump water into its tower until Thursday, said Keith Coleman, who in January will take over from Janice Davidson as director of Ottawa County Emergency Management. Monday was his first day on the job in Ottawa County.

Coleman said his office had found a generator for Culver's water system, gotten the tower filled, and left it there for future use.

You? No generator

Calls about generators flooded into Saline County Emergency Management Thursday, after word that Wednesday's disaster declaration meant generators were on the way.

"The press release was not real well-worded," said Dean Speaks, deputy director of Saline County Emergency Management. "We've been fielding a lot of calls today, about every other one."

He said he'd heard people also were calling other state offices -- such as the Salina office of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

The generators are intended to keep critical services, such as water and sewer plants, in operation.

"People need to understand that we don't give generators to their homes," he said. "I understand their situation, but there's nothing we can do."

Heading for shelter

Coleman also said Ottawa County Emergency Management was urging people without power to go to the Red Cross shelter at Camp Webster, just north of the Interstate Highway 70 and Ohio junction, north of Salina.

"I don't know how many might go to the shelter, but most of our rural electric customers are still out of power," he said.

He said emergency management didn't yet have plans to transport people, but "if we get phone calls, we'll set something up."

"We're trying to get people from smaller towns to go to the shelters in Salina and Wilson," to avoid spreading the Red Cross' resources too thinly, said Vicktoria Degand, executive director of Salina's North Central Kansas Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Another concern, Degand said, "is we cannot open a shelter unless we have guaranteed power," which isn't the case across much of the region.

"Earlier in the day, we were thinking we'd see a decrease" of people in the shelters Thursday night, "but now we're expecting more people to show up."

On Wednesday night, 155 people stayed at Camp Webster, and the Red Cross had served 956 meals and 358 snacks; the shelter's capacity is about 400.

At Sterl Hall in Abilene, 35 spent the night Wednesday, and the shelter was feeding about 80 people three times a day; a combined 17 stayed at the shelters in Lincoln and Wilson.

Nerves starting to fray

"We're anticipating this going on for several days," Degand said. "People are hitting their level of tolerance, and the hotel rooms are filled. With another storm heading in, things are not looking real positive."

In Salina, Degand said, people who need help getting to Camp Webster but can't afford taxi fare can call the taxi voucher program at 827-9224 and get a ride for $1.

With more people expected to show up at the shelters, Degand appealed for both volunteers and donations.

People interested in volunteering should call the Volunteer Connection at 823-3128.

"We need people with nursing skills," Degand said. "By this weekend, we'll need mental health workers -- people are starting to feel the wear and tear. We also need general help, with serving food and registering people."

Donations for local disaster relief can be sent to the Red Cross, PO Box, 1633, Salina, Kan., 67401

n Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by e-mail at mstrand@salina.com.