KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Thousands of Kansas Citians remain without power over 72 hours after severe weather struck Friday.
Evergy reported that by 3 p.m. Monday, about 96% of customers affected by the storm have had their power restored.
However, additional storms Sunday and Monday delayed the restoration process.
Of the outages, 8,495 had been assigned and 1,853 were new outages, as of 3 p.m., per Evergy. By 5:30 p.m., Evergy's outage map showed just over 6,000 affected customers and 1,129 active outages.
Chuck Caisley, Evergy’s chief customer officer, said he’s confident by the time the KC area settles in to sleep Monday night, the restoration percentage should equal 97-98%.
“Everyday life depends on electricity,” Caisley said. “And so if you don't have electricity, you're not getting things like air conditioning, you're not getting things like your internet — that impacts school, that impacts work. Today's society really does depend on electricity. We want you to have your electricity on. We're doing absolutely everything we can to make sure that happens.”
Over the past three days, Caisley said he has received many questions asking about the role tree trimming played in the severity of damage and restoration efforts. He said the main factor for damage was straight-line winds that snapped or damaged poles.
“Tree trimming more would not have kept this outage at a lower number, it would not have kept this outage from being longer,” he said. “We had snapped poles that didn't have any trees in them. And we had a ton of damage from entire trees rooted up and gone into those lines.”
He maintained tree trimming is one of Evergy’s biggest budget items, and crews are out trimming nearly 365 days a year.
Nevertheless, Caisley acknowledged the frustration downed vegetation has caused.
In one instance, crews were asked by Prairie Village's mayor to provide information on an estimated clearance time. Despite obliging, the information was not accurate as restoration did not go as planned.
“We cleared all that damage up, we re-energize the line, and of the 400-500 that were out, about 200 came on and 300 people were very disappointed because two blocks over in somebody's backyard, a piece of a tree had fallen on the lines and shorted out the rest of that circuit," Caisley said.
With multiple variations of such scenario, Caisley said communicating specific information is difficult, especially with crews working so quickly that not all information is entered into the system.
“But what people really want is, ‘When am I going to be back on?’” Caisley said. “The questions we get are, ‘I’ll try and find a hotel if it's going to be more than 12 hours. Should I worry about my food or not?' And the simple fact of the matter is, if you were my best friend in the whole world, and I wanted nothing more than to get you[r energy] on, I wouldn't be able to give you any better information than what we put out now.”
As restoration efforts continue and are expected to conclude early this week, Paisley praised the crews working 16-hour shifts for their “thankless” dedication to completing repairs.
In an effort to restore power as quickly as possible, not all fixes are long-term. In many cases, Caisley said crews will be sent back out after power is restored to adjust temporary repairs to permanent fixes.
Once that work is complete, Evergy will begin an after-action report where the situation is evaluated so changes can be made for future incidents.
An updated look at the outage map and the number of affected customers can be viewed HERE.
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