Joe Purington’s first problem in serving to to get energy restored through the Ice Storm of 1998 was stepping into his automobile. He remembers waking earlier than daybreak and needing a hammer to chip away at his Jeep Cherokee, encased in ice, so he might open the door.

Lastly on the highway from his house in Winthrop to Central Maine Energy’s headquarters in Augusta, Purington might see that this storm was totally different. Typical storms drop branches and bushes onto energy strains. What he seen had been damaged poles and cross arms in all places, collapsed underneath the sheer weight of the ice. It was without delay terrifying and exquisite.

“Once I regarded on the surroundings, when the solar was rising, it was nearly magical,” he recalled.

Purington was a substation supervisor again then. At present, he’s CMP’s president and chief govt.

At present, the infrastructure that makes up distribution and transmission programs at Maine’s largest utility have gotten extra sturdy, engineered to deal with worsening climate. That’s one legacy of the ice storm, nevertheless it’s an ongoing and expensive course of.

Whereas the Ice Storm of 1998 was a seminal occasion, excessive climate situations have gotten extra frequent in a warming world, spawning extra heavy moist snow and robust wind gusts. That actuality was underscored late final month with back-to-back snow and wind storms that minimize off energy to tons of of 1000’s of properties.

Because the local weather adjustments, ice storm situations additionally have gotten extra frequent. Whereas the severity of the historic 1998 storm was the results of an uncommon mixture of things, it’s one thing Purington desires to be prepared for.

“We might have a storm like that once more, with out query,” Purington mentioned of the 1998 occasion. “The distinction is how we put together and plan for it.”

At present, Maine utilities get higher climate forecasts. They’ve formal protocols for staging crews when storms threaten, together with extra out-of-state employees referred to as up by mutual help pacts.

Utilities have higher communications with emergency administration businesses. They may also help inform clients by way of textual content alerts and on-line outage maps.

And utilities now have set necessities for tips on how to carry out scheduled tree trimming, though there are requires even more-aggressive pruning to assist maintain branches off wires. It’s a high precedence in a state that’s greater than 90% forested. On the similar time, stouter poles, coated wires that resist harm and redundant circuits that restrict the variety of outages when bushes do fall are changing older infrastructure.

These measures value cash. There’s fixed rigidity to find a stability between hardening the grid, and the affect on already-high electrical payments.

However even now, excessive climate may cause widespread outages, as a lot of the state was reminded on the finish of December.

A two-day storm that hit Maine roughly per week earlier than Christmas buried some inland areas underneath greater than 2 toes of heavy, moist snow that toppled bushes and utility strains. At its peak, greater than 122,000 CMP clients had been with out energy. It took 5 days to get everybody again, even with 1,700 employees who got here from as distant as Pennsylvania and New York.

A second highly effective storm barreled throughout the nation and introduced torrential rain and hurricane-force winds to Maine on Dec. 23, knocking out energy to greater than 300,000 CMP clients. Many had been with out energy for days over the vacation weekend. The restoration effort, which lasted by Christmas Eve and Christmas, included resetting greater than 300 damaged utility poles.

THREE INCHES OF ICE

The Ice Storm of 1998 was one in every of Maine’s best pure disasters. Greater than half of the state’s inhabitants was plunged into darkness; it took CMP 23 days to revive energy to the final house. All 16 counties had been declared federal catastrophe areas. In whole, the storm value the state $320 million – greater than $584 million as we speak – and resulted in eight deaths.

Climate forecasters knew a storm was coming, and warned Mainers to arrange for ice. However the unprecedented affect was linked to a few days of regular, gentle rain falling on frigid surfaces, beginning Jan. 5. Typically described as a slow-moving catastrophe, it coated the state with a layer of ice as much as 3 inches thick.

A complete of 340,000 CMP clients misplaced energy, some greater than as soon as as newly shaped ice took out extra of the system. The corporate changed 2,600 poles, 4,000 cross arms and strung 2 million toes of recent wire.

Dennis Marrotte, a substations normal technician from CMP, walks towards a home on Route 302 in Westbrook to do a storm evaluation earlier than repairs are made to damaged energy strains after the Ice Storm of 1998. Jack Milton/Press Herald

At Bangor Hydro, the utility now referred to as Versant Energy that serves jap and northern Maine, 105,000 clients misplaced energy. Full restoration took 12 days, though all repairs took nearly a month, together with resetting 429 poles. It took 29 days to rebuild a serious transmission line connecting components of Hancock County, utilizing a generator from the Nationwide Guard.

Mainers have a tendency to consider the occasion as “their” ice storm. However the affect was extreme over a large space stretching from Ontario and Quebec by upstate New York to New Brunswick. It killed 35 individuals and injured 1,000 in Canada, in accordance with the CBC, and left 3.5 million Quebecers at the hours of darkness. The federal government referred to as up 15,000 troops to assist, the most important peacetime deployment in Canadian historical past.

In the US, the Nationwide Climate Service dubbed it the Nice Ice Storm of 1998. Climate Underground ranked it first in an inventory of high 10 ice storms to hit the nation.

HELP FROM AWAY

After arriving at CMP’s headquarters, Purington was assigned to drive forward of line crews with circuit maps to evaluate harm. A significant problem was resetting the fuses on utility poles that had tripped when bushes fell on strains, or opening them so employees might safely make repairs within the space. These cutouts, as they’re referred to as, are managed manually by a lineworker with a telescoping stick.

However all of the cutouts had been clad in thick ice. Staff wanted to go up in bucket vehicles and whack them with pliers to entry the swap. At present, the system is being enhanced with strong state “reclosers,” switches which have elements protected contained in the unit. They are often operated remotely and may reroute energy to scale back the affect on a circuit.

In 1998, CMP initially had 25 crews on name from different areas. Through the second storm final month, the corporate deployed subject employees from 20 different states, in addition to New Brunswick and Quebec. Of the 637 contractor crews that helped restore energy for CMP, solely 70 had been primarily based within the state.

Many stayed in motels across the service space previous to the storm, probably reducing days off full restoration.

A Central Maine Energy lineman works to take away a limb from an icy energy line in Augusta on Jan. 8, 1998. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

CMP and Versant Energy, which serves northern and jap Maine, are members of the North Atlantic Mutual Help Group, made up of 21 utilities in 31 states and 4 Canadian provinces. They’ve developed formal processes and protocols for serving to one another when main outages threaten.

That decision-up is pushed by climate forecasts. CMP contracts with three non-public meteorologists who present every day forecasts, together with wind pace and ice accumulation fashions. The forecasts, and previous expertise, assist form an in depth emergency response plan. It assembles sources primarily based on how extreme the occasion is anticipated to be.

‘NO LINE IS SAFE TO TOUCH’

In an outage, clients wish to know when the lights will return on. Speaking with clients was more difficult 25 years in the past, when the web was younger and never everybody had a cellphone.

Clark Irwin, who labored in a four-person public affairs division on the time, remembers lengthy days in Augusta on the telephone speaking to information media and clients who had been shunted to his crew. Some callers had heard rumors that CMP was someway re-routing energy to different areas, and bypassing their roads.

“These buyer calls,” Irwin mentioned, “usually concerned individuals understandably upset that they had been nonetheless with out energy, and infrequently might see lights on close by. … Many of those clients had been pissed off and indignant – typically determined as a result of their chilly properties had babies or aged residents – so these telephone conversations didn’t all the time go nicely.”

For individuals who couldn’t watch tv or get a newspaper delivered, radio turned a strong instrument. If individuals had battery-powered radios or entry to their vehicles, they may get data.

Irwin’s house misplaced energy for 10 days. His household burned scrap wooden and damaged tree branches to remain heat and maintain the pipes from freezing.

Speaking with clients is less complicated as we speak than in 1998, with street-by-street outage particulars and restoration time estimates out there on-line and thru a cell app.

Central Maine Energy President David Flanagan discusses the ice storm on Jan. 22, 1998. Greater than 200,000 properties misplaced energy through the storm, 41% of CMP’s clients. Gordon Chibroski/Press Herald

However the ice storm additionally illustrated the worth of high management talking on to clients, a method used with nice success by David Flanagan, who had Purington’s job in 1998. A few days after Mainers awoke in chilly, darkish properties, radio stations started working advertisements that includes Flanagan.

“If we work collectively and look out for one another,” he advised anybody who might hear him, “we’ll get by this.” Flanagan, who died in 2021, was credited with conveying the picture of chief govt as a hands-on downside solver.

Mark Ishkanian, who labored in CMP’s public affairs workplace, recollects that this was a sustained effort all through the lengthy restoration interval. However as continues to be the case with any extended outage, it was a problem. He remembers going with Flanagan to fulfill some lineworkers round day 19 of the outage.

“We went out to the Norway space,” Ishkanian recalled, “talked with some crew members after which had been accosted by a few clients whose persistence was exhausted. After they realized it was the CEO they had been speaking to, their tone modified considerably, however they had been nonetheless pissed off to be with out energy. David listened to their complaints and warranted them we might redouble our efforts to get them on-line quickly.”

One other aspect of the general public relations drive was reviving media advertisements from a security consciousness marketing campaign launched a number of years earlier. It featured a burly lineworker who grew up on the Maine coast, Jim Wright, warning clients in his Down East accent, “No line is protected to the touch, ever!”

Newspaper advertisements exhibiting CMP lineworkers and ice-coated bushes bolstered that advertising message by modifying what had change into a catchphrase of the period: “Now greater than ever, keep in mind that no line is protected to the touch.”

The slogan was so ingrained in Maine’s fashionable tradition on the time that it resonated when Vice President Al Gore got here to Maine to view the catastrophe and announce federal reduction efforts. Visiting a restoration web site in Auburn, Gore was photographed holding a utility wire, and transferring it out of the best way.

Vice President Al Gore and Auburn Assistant Metropolis Administrator Mark Adams seize an influence line whereas inspecting the harm from the storm. Gore promised $28 million in reduction throughout his Jan. 10 go to to Maine. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal

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Wright, now a building supervisor in CMP’s high-voltage division, mentioned he noticed the picture in a newspaper the next day.

“I chuckled about it,” he mentioned. “However clients I met within the subject and coworkers would say, ‘Jim, you must go speak to Al Gore. He didn’t see your advertisements.’ ”

STRONGER TRANSMISSION CORRIDORS

For all the teachings realized in Maine, the storm left a fair larger legacy in Quebec.

Rain fell there for 5 days, plunging downtown Montreal into darkness, taking down 24,000 poles and 900 metal towers. For Hydro-Quebec, the provincial energy firm, it was a wake-up name for the rising impacts of local weather change.

“Hydro-Quebec,” the utility notes on its web site, “now performs twice as many interventions as a consequence of local weather change as a result of extra frequent episodes of moist snow, freezing rain and robust winds improve the danger of falling bushes or branches on energy strains.”

As in Maine, Quebec is putting in stronger poles and wires alongside its street-side distribution system and trimming extra bushes. However a parallel lesson was to harden the transmission system, basically the interstate freeway of any electrical grid. The storm was so extreme that enormous towers weighed down by ice collapsed and pulled down their neighbors, an occasion referred to as cascading.

At present, each tenth tower is hardened to forestall cascading. Strains are made to resist ice coatings as much as 4 inches. Redundant routes have been established round Montreal, so energy could be fed from different areas.

Anticipating extra ice because the local weather warms, Hydro-Quebec has developed a real-time icing occasion administration system that features distant sensors and alarms. It constructed a remotely operated, truck-mounted de-icing car that may blast steam at a frozen substation.

The teachings weren’t misplaced on Maine, the place transmission corridors are being strengthened with metal monopoles that resist ice build-up higher than old-style lattice towers. Current H-frame wood constructions that function two poles linked by a horizontal piece are being upgraded with X braces.

“I believe the transmission system is far more sturdy,” mentioned Lisa Martin, a Versant Energy supervisor who previously labored in transmission growth on the firm.

A part of that technique consists of tying collectively close by transmission routes to create a system through which energy could be shunted from one other line to revive service, one thing the corporate has been engaged on within the Orono-Previous City space.

“In the event you can swap the system round and feed clients a special means, it creates extra of a looped system, slightly than a radial system,” Martin mentioned. “Having redundancy on the transmission stage, that’s the important thing.”

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