Seward County was officially back on the electrical grid as of March 26, one week after a powerful blizzard left a trail of downed utility poles, power lines, and abandoned vehicles in its wake.
Seward County Commission Chair Misty Ahmic signed a declaration of emergency for the county on March 19 to address the damage done to public and private property and the major damage area utility companies were fighting.
The declaration will allow the county to expend emergency funds from the state’s emergency fund and other resources to remedy the damages.
At the county board of commissioners’ March 25 meeting, Ahmic encouraged city and village leaders to reach out to Seward County Emergency Manager Gary Petersen for information on how to file their own emergency declarations to access possible funding for storm repairs.
She also said county workers should track and document their storm-related work hours to help quantify damage costs.
Commissioners reported that several villages and/or their volunteer fire departments did not have working generators in the storm.
Fire departments, veterans groups and others opened up warming locations across the county where people could come in and charge their phones and warm up during the worst of the outages.
Seward County Highway Superintendent Jon Regnier told commissioners his team did a “phenomenal” job with the storm.
Commissioner Raegan Hain, who serves as the board’s liaison with the highway department, also commended the staff, and she and Ahmic celebrated the team’s work by providing tacos and all the fixings for a lunch at the Seward County Highway Department’s facility west of Seward on March 27. Both serve as the board’s liaisons to the department.
Ahmic said the crews deserve the recognition.
“I cannot thank those guys enough,” Ahmic said. “I think the dedication that they actually have is unrecognized. I am really grateful for them.”
Regnier said several of the snowplow operators stayed overnight at their shops to be ready to work when the storm subsided. Generators at four of the county’s eight remote shops did not work.
Regnier said as workers from the power district finished their work, county crews were trying to get to those roads to pick up barricades and reopen them to traffic.
Norris Public Power District posted online March 26 that all of its customers would be reconnected to power that day.
All six counties served by Norris were declared disaster areas by Gov. Jim Pillen after the March 19 snowstorm.
For Norris, the work of reconnecting power to the households and businesses in the area took eight days, even with the help of crews from Dawson, Southern and Nebraska Public Power Districts, Lincoln Electric System, West Central Electric Cooperative, Rosebud Electric Cooperative, and IES Commercial.
A statement on Norris’ website indicated that the utility is beginning the “recovery phase” of cleanup by replacing damaged poles, crossarms, insulators, and hardware compromised by the storm.
