KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Crews are at work 24 hours a day to restore power to approximately 11,868 Evergy customers still experiencing outages Sunday after a powerful storm swept through Kansas and Missouri on Friday.
Chuck Caisley, Evergy senior vice president and chief customer officer, told reporters Sunday morning that significant concentrations of outages are in the Kansas City area, particularly the south KC region — Leawood, Prairie Village and Lenexa. Outages also expand to Topeka, Lawrence and reach as far south as Fort Scott and Humboldt.
Caisley projected that with such a large response team, a significant number of outages would be resolved Sunday.
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By later in the day, Evergy confirmed power had been restored for most customers in Topeka and Lawrence. However, efforts across the KC metro are expected to extend into Monday and Tuesday.
"That's one of the things that has made this more difficult, is that the damage is fairly spread out across the state," Caisley said. "When all of those cities are hit at the same time with the same storm, it just slows down the restoration effort," he said.
A total of 244,000 customers lost power Friday, with a peak of 186,000 outages at one given time.
As of 9 p.m. Sunday, over 48 hours later, 93% of outages have been restored. Evergy also reports of the nearly 14,500 customers without power, more than half of those outages have been assigned a crew.
Additional storms Sunday brought "heavy rain, periods of lightning and muddy conditions that slowed and delayed restoration work for several hours," per Evergy.
Crews
Three-thousand men and women and a fleet of 2,000 vehicles are in the field to continue the restoration effort.
One-third of the individuals at work were called in as mutual assistance from other utilities to help, coming from as far as Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, eastern and southern Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.
Utility companies AEP, Alliant, Liberty, MidAmerican, Northern Indiana Public Service, OG&E and OPPD provided assistance to the recovery effort. Crews will be working 16-hour shifts to address the issue.
Caisley said Friday's storm was the "largest utility restoration staging area that has occurred in Kansas City since the ice storm in 2002."
"We're really calling folks from all over the Midwest, we've been really thrilled with the response," Caisley said.
Power was first restored to critical infrastructure — hospitals, wastewater treatment facilities — before crews focused on the backbone of the system that carries the most customers. Outages were then targeted based on size.
Crews ensure lines are not energized before cleaning up the trees impacting them. They then ground out the system before replacing the infrastructure.
The storm brought 80-100 mph winds and two cases of unconfirmed tornadic or cyclonic activity.
Damage
Over 500 poles were snapped, uprooted or sustained major damage by the storm.
"The damage that was done by this isn't for branches coming into contact with lines ... it's where trees are uprooted, thrown into poles and poles are snapped," Caisley said.
The act of replacing a pole can take two trucks, 6-8 people and 2-4 hours.
Caisley said those without power can keep their houses cool until service is restored by opening windows at night and closing them in the morning.
He also suggested hanging damp towels and sheets in front of open windows on a side of the house not being hit by sunlight, bringing moist, cool air into the house when the breeze hits. Curtains and drapes can also be closed to block out sunshine and heat.
Restoration
Evergy reports that just because crews aren't seen in a neighborhood, it doesn't mean they aren't working to address the issue. The damage impacting a system could be located miles away from affected customers.
The company also asks the community not to approach line crews while they are at work for safety reasons and because it slows down the restoration process.
"This storm response is the largest mobilization of crews in Evergy's history, and it is still growing," per Evergy.
Anyone with questions can learn more and/or report an outage on Evergy's outage map. Anyone located in the KC area with questions can call 1-800-LIGHT-KC, while those in central and south central Kansas can call 1-800-LIGHT-KS.
