An ice storm is a complete oxymoron. On one hand, an Insight associate of mine, Roger (who loves to share his wonderful pictures), captured its magnificence with this photograph. On the other hand, dozens of people, including people in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, lost their lives due to the countless hazards these storms create.
LG&E and Vectren crews continue to work intensely, round-the-clock, to restore power throughout their service areas. Our task is to try to stay right behind them so we can repair damage to our network that was undetectable until the power was restored. We know that the rate of power restoration is beginning to increase now as electric crews arrive from other areas to help out. As of this morning, the Courier-Journal reported that nearly 175,000 LG&E customers were still without power.
We continue the slow and careful recovery throughout our service areas. I am pleased to report that Northern Kentucky, Columbus and Bowling Green are working on repairing residual issues but they are rapidly returning to normal. Lexington is almost there but Louisville and Evansville both have a quite a way to go. We have nearly 300 portable generators providing power to our plant where power is interrupted along the way to other homes that have electricity. All of our critical technical locations are back on regular power since our main headend that serves all of the Louisville market was restored yesterday. Prior to that, we were operating on generators.
Insight employees are on round-the-clock duty. Even those in districts that are nearly back to normal are filling in over the weekend to help the heavy work load in the harder-stricken areas. If you are trying to call us and having trouble getting through, please accept our apology. Our call centers are certainly overloaded and we are trying very hard to handle all of your inquiries.
Recovering from a disaster of this magnitude is hardly easy and never flawless. Individual service issues that might seem so simple under normal circumstances can become very complicated when we are attempting to restore service to so many in the shortest possible time. And a special thanks to all of the men and women at Insight, as well as all the other utilities and telecommunications providers, for working so selflessly to restore their services to their customers.
Kudos to Insight for keeping up as much as possible during the storm. I thankfully never lost power for more than 30 seconds or so on several occasions, enough that my battery backup kept my network and computers up and running, and my cable modem stayed up the entire time.
With an IP phone connected to the phone system in the office and VPN access, I was able to do my job as usual except from home, avoiding the treacherous roadways but still maintaining business as usual in the office.
Residential service is critically important in times like this, as it lets many of us work where it would otherwise be impossible, or require risking our lives on the roadways. Thanks for keeping it online.
Posted by: Chris Buechler | Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 02:28 PM