When Basin Electric Class C member Burke-Divide Electric Cooperative needed help after a severe snowstorm in late April, employees from Basin Electric’s TSM (Transmission System Maintenance) shop in Menoken, North Dakota, stepped up to help.
Headquartered in Columbus, North Dakota, the cooperative was 100% in the dark for the first time in its history. They had 1,750 poles on the ground, hundreds of miles of line affected, and wet work conditions to deal with.
“After the storm, they were in pretty rough shape up there. Burke-Divide reached out saying they couldn’t get in with wheeled vehicles due to the snow and asked if they could borrow a couple of tracked side-by-sides. We don’t often receive requests from members to borrow those, but they were in need and we were happy to help,” says Derik Johnson, Basin Electric manager of TSM.
Basin Electric has six tracked side-by-sides across its service territory. Matt Woehl, Basin Electric communications technician apprentice, delivered the vehicles to Burke-Divide one at a time.
“We had one with us in Menoken so I ran that up on Monday afternoon, but we’d moved the other to Williston TSM so I had to go pick it up. They’d already taken the tracks off for the season a couple of weeks before, so I put those back on and ran that up Tuesday morning,” Woehl says.
“The roads were mostly clear getting there, but the fields were pretty full. A couple of drifts were up to the mirrors on the truck,” he says. “Having the tracked side-by-sides helped them a lot for getting into certain areas.”
Johnson says that without the tracked side-by-sides, outage times could’ve been prolonged. “They would’ve been spending a lot more time on things like getting a truck unstuck. We're here to help the membership when we can. By having these vehicles they were able to get out in a hurry so they could assess damage and get the lights back on.”
In addition to borrowing vehicles, Paul Metz, Basin Electric mechanic operator/journeyman, spent nine days helping Burke-Divide with necessary repairs, like bucket truck servicing, oil changes, windshield replacements, and swapping seasonal tires.
“One bucket truck had a hydraulic breakdown in the field. The biggest thing was that truck was setup in the middle of the road and almost had the road blocked off. A local repair shop was kind enough to get the hydraulic fittings and make up a hydraulic hose. It would’ve been a nightmare trying to get parts in with everything going on with the storm. I was able to get the truck back in the field so they could keep doing their job of getting power back up,” Metz says.
Even with the assistance from Basin Electric and other local cooperatives, it took Burke-Divide nearly three weeks to get power back to all residences.
“Being able to come together as a team to get power back to end-use members is why we do what we do,” Johnson says.
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