As was the Case in 2005 When Hurricane Rita Made Her Presence Known, Sam Houston Electric Cooperative found itself directly in the path of Hurricane Ike. Like many cooperatives, Sam Houston mainly serves a rural service territory. Located in eastern Texas, tall pines are the predominant trees, leaving Sam Houston's power lines vulnerable to falling trees and crashing limbs. Add the need to bring back primary taps feeding remote customers, and a storm the magnitude of Ike will bring the entire distribution system down.

STANDING READY

Once it became clear Ike was headed to the Texas coast, Sam Houston dusted off its emergency operations plan and put it in motion. The plan wasn't actually that dusty, and the employees' skills were still sharp from restoration work performed in 2005 after Hurricane Rita.

For Ike, tensions became elevated when Polk County Judge Thompson issued a mandatory limited evacuation order on Friday morning, Sept. 12 for flood-prone low-lying areas, mobile homes, travel trailers and substandard housing.

To meet the expected need for line and tree-trimming crews, Sam Houston Electric Cooperative initially secured the services of approximately 1300 crew members to arrive after the worst of the storm passed. Food, lodging and fuel had been secured to supply staging areas located throughout the service territory.

As the storm passed through, it left nary a customer untouched, as the cooperative found all of its 66,000 meters without power. After the brunt of the storm passed, crews assessed the damage from the air and by ground. Workers started the long process of removing trees and clearing debris. Once the tree trimmers cleared a path, line crews began repairing damaged lines, replacing poles and changing out transformers.

MAINTAINING A TENT CITY

Large tents and support facilities were set up near the towns of Coldspring, Tarkington and Woodville, each capable of housing and feeding 500 individuals with additional accommodations made available in Livingston.

Sam Houston Electric Cooperative's Mike Beumel was responsible for the Coldspring staging area. He picked up the nickname “The Mayor of Tent City,” which he didn't care for much.

Beumel shared a little about the chaos of the early days as the site was being readied for incoming crews. “We knew exactly what we'd be doing, but we pitched a lot of ideas back and forth and made a lot of phone calls, and it all came together.”

Maintaining a tent city can be quite the balancing act. A trailer full of food arrived at four in the morning. And diesel to fill the trucks was running low. But each of the workers at the Coldspring tent city, from the gas pumpers to the cooks to the security personnel, demonstrated the heart of a servant. Steve Comstock, the “Assistant Mayor of Tent City,” stated, “They are not here for the money; they are here to make a difference in people's lives.”

Of course, most of the linemen and tree trimmers were unaware of the commotion behind the scenes of the tent city, only recognizing that they had good food to eat, a bed to sleep in and a hot shower. Each morning they would pick up their box lunch, grab a few bags of ice, pick up the wire and hardware they would need, and head out for another day.

ASSESSING THE DAMAGE

Sam Houston Electric Cooperative also found that the Entergy Texas transmission grid, which delivers electricity to the Sam Houston distribution system, had been severely damaged, as well. As the cooperative worked to clear trees and repair distribution lines, Entergy was doing the same on its transmission system.

Line workers and tree trimmers continued to pour in throughout the day on Monday, Sept. 15, and Tuesday, Sept. 16, so that by Tuesday afternoon, the total workforce exceeded 2500. Assessment teams found that Hurricane Ike had delivered twice the damage to Sam Houston's 10-county service territory that Hurricane Rita delivered in 2005.