You can't blame Amy Bass.
Ms. Bass is the target of a lot of anger since she, in her role as public information spokeswoman for Empire District Electric Company, has had to explain to residents of Joplin and the surrounding communities why their power has not been restored nearly five days after the ice storm that wreaked havoc throughout the community.
It is not Ms. Bass' fault. She is told what to say and she says it. She is good at her job. Unfortunately, it does not appear that anyone in the media is doing much except taking her statements at face value.
Time after time, Ms. Bass has commented on how many "customers" still lack service. How many of those who are huddled in the cold (with colder temperatures coming this weekend) are residential customers? I drove through residential areas of Joplin earlier tonight shortly after dark and I saw very few lights, and those can probably be safely attributed to generators.
About half of the "customers" who lost their power have had it restored, Ms. Bass indicated. I would like to know, and I am sure I am not the only one, just how many of those who had their power restored were business "customers" and how many were residential "customers."
By now, we know that great efforts are made to restore power to hospitals and other vital institutions first, but why can't we provided with a step-by-step blueprint of how Empire restores power and an explanation of why it does it in that fashion?
If that information is not forthcoming from Empire, and odds are it will not be, an enterprising reporter for the Joplin Globe or one of our Joplin area television stations, should hit the phones when this is over, and find out when power was restored in each section of town.
Exactly what steps did Empire take between January and last weekend to prepare for an ice storm? As usual, when the media is involved, they do an excellent job covering the story when it was taking place 11 months ago, but have done little, if any, follow-up since. Obviously, the possibility of another ice storm in the near future is real, but even if one does not occur, the time for the media to be tracking this story is through the spring, summer, and fall months, when preparations should be made. Empire may have been working all along to prepare for a storm of this magnitude, but we have no way of knowing that if the questions are not asked.
Why have other electric companies been able to restore power more quickly than Empire? Was the storm that much worse in areas that are serviced by Empire?
Let's make sure we give credit to the hard working electrical linemen and tree trimmers for the job they are doing this week, and maybe next, but now is not the time to give their bosses a free ride. These questions must be asked and answered.
It is quite possible that there is a perfectly logical reason for everything that has been done or has not been done, but if the questions are not asked, how will we ever know?
12 comments:
Having driven down Main Street south of 20th the last 4 days, I can tell you that the businesses on the east side were without power while those on the West had it sporadically. That was the dividing line and many of the residences west of that line also had power.
One other thing to note. I've been working extra time at my night job since this started because we have had power, except for a few hours Sunday. That job is, obviously, at a business. In our particular case, having power restored to one business customer allowed that one business customer to deliver hot food to over 1000 houses in the last 4 days. Empire couldn't have restored power to a fraction of that number of homes directly in the same amount of time.
Should the media be asking questions? Sure. Should they be so overtly socialist? No.
We were lucky enough not to lose our electricity except for a brief outage during this storm. Apparently we were only on the edge of it. However.
You couldn't help but notice that when the tv announced which companies had how many customers who were still without electricity that Empire Electric at 48,000 had more than double its closest competition (I think 20,000+) in the "electricity outage" contest while some electric companies only had a few thousand.
Last summer well after the last year's ice storm, we were driving down the road and my husband noticed and stated that one of the electric poles was rotted at the bottom. Empire Electric hadn't replaced it yet and as far as I know, they still haven't. My suspicion is that the policy is that they simply wait till the pole goes down and customers lose power before they do anything about it. I would consider that mismanagement of a vital utility. Tom apparently sees it as a prudent business decision? Then again, Tom apparently sees hoping that a business will come by and deliver food (for free or for profit?) as admirable. Whatever.
And as for Tom and his socialism label for investigations? As P.T. Barnum said...
There are still many business on Main, and a few on Rangeline without power.
Randy,
I had the same questions. I went to their Web site, and found the full restoration blueprint:
https://www.empiredistrict.com/Safety/OutageRestoration.aspx
Information on Empire's efforts:
www.mickeymouse.com
The January ice storm started me thinking about alternative energy. After this last storm, with power being not all reliable, I'm thinking about it even harder. There's also the fact that I'm tired of high energy bills.
For Tom, a truly independent attitude would have you prepared for an ice storm with either a wood burning stove, fireplace, or a gas stove or some sort of solar power back up system. With the first three items, you still have heat in the house and a way to heat something to eat making restoration of business before individuals a moot point. You may think you're being independent, but in reality you are urging dependence on businesses and/or corporations. Historically speaking, that's not a good thing either.
I checked the Empire District website's plan, but I would prefer to see specifics. What areas were restored (of those that have been restored) and when were they restored. The company's priorities may differ from its customers, and it would be nice to make sure it is following its blueprint.
Tom may be on to something regarding The Turner Report's socialist leanings. Tom will likely be the first to turn in the Turner Report when the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" Commission comes to town for a hearing.
I think Tom would hope that all those socialist liberal whiners just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, take personal responsibility and use their own money, not government handouts, to power their own homes.
Tom is right, these whining babies have spent their extra money on frivoulous crap like food, gasoline and health insurance when they should have been taking responsibility by setting their homes up for emergency living off the grid.
Randy, it's amazing the way those of your readers who lack the courage of their convictions to put their names to their thoughts are so quick to put words in my mouth. Resources are not unlimited, especially in a crisis situation. They have to be allocated some way. There's certainly room to debate how they should be allocated, but starting from an assumption that businesses are bad is misguided at best. I never suggested that people should spend their money on "emergency living off the grid" instead of the necessities of life. I did suggest that expecting Empire not to prioritize during a crisis is ridiculous and assuming that getting power back to businesses that serve thousands first is not the right priority is wrongheaded.
For the gentleman or lady (I'm not sure which, since it was one of several anonymous cowards) who suggested that somehow I wasn't qualified to comment because I don't have a backup power source - I have wood heat and last January I cooked on it and heated with it for a week when temperatures were on average about 20 degrees lower than this week.
Various anonymouses - real arguments would be much better than a collection of ad hominems.
Funny thing. You're reading a lot into the post that isn't there. The only one who used the word "qualified" in any context was you. And I don't think I ever said anything about living "off the grid" either.
I suppose I could descend to calling you names too, but I don't think Randy would appreciate it. I just get tired of hearing people who don't even appear to realize that they're pushing the old saying "if you take care of businesses, they'll take care of you." It is not true and it never was. It is also unfortunate but not unexpected that you don't want anyone to dispute what you say.
This "Tom" guy really should not put his pic on his posts.....ughhh!
I blame Empire for the vast outage because many months ago they quit trimming trees around power lines. They did that to save money I am told and it sure did work, they saved by not trimming and now the tree branches fell and I will pay for the clean up and ultimately I will pay higher rates because of the overtime needed to restore power and fix us all up again. What a deal, CEO will probably get a bonus for that one. We were without power for 4 days, we have all the things in place to run our home but it should not have been so bad, they should do their part and prevention would have gone a long way. Now the tree stores will make a huge amount in the spring when we all have to go replace our downed trees. Life!!!
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