It's been one year since Oregon experienced a devastating ice storm, which left tens of thousands of people in Lane County without power. Now, the Springfield Utility Board and the Eugene Water and Electric Board are taking steps to prepare for a similar disaster in the future.
In the days leading up to 2024 ice storm, SUB General Manager Jeff Nelson was getting regular updates from the National Weather Service. But while his staff were gearing up for a possible emergency, Nelson said they thought they might avoid the worst.
“The forecasts were evolving over time," he said. "There was no certainty about what the event could be, but what we were told ... is that the majority of the event would happen to the north and west of Springfield.”
When the freezing rain started on Jan. 13, it was worse than expected. A thick layer of ice covered much of Lane County, trapping some residents in their homes for days.
Soon, Eugene Springfield Fire was seeing a spike in injuries and hospitalizations. Battalion Chief Markus Lay said during the worst day of the storm, emergency workers responded to more than twice as many calls as normal.
“There were (public service announcements) saying ‘if you don't need to go outside your house, don't do it. It is super slippery. You're going to slip and fall,'" said Lay. "A lot of people either didn't get the message or they didn't understand how significant that concern was. It was the slickest surface I've ever tried to work on.”
The ice toppled trees—more than 20,000 in just Springfield alone. It also damaged power lines, leaving many residents in freezing temperatures with no heat or electricity.
Throughout the event, 75% of SUB customers lost power at some point, while outages in EWEB's service area peaked at about a fourth of customers simultaneously. As those utilities worked to restore services, officials said the damage they encountered was more than in previous winter storms.
EWEB spokesperson Robyn Smith said one part of the utility’s service area was especially difficult for repair crews to reach. In the McKenzie Valley, a rural area east of Eugene, it took the utility over a week to restore power to some customers.
“Fallen trees were blocking roads," said Smith. "Power poles were toppled over from the weight of the ice. Wires were snagged and snapped from the strain of that additional weight.”
In Springfield, SUB’s call center was overwhelmed, according to an after-action report by an outside consultant. Nelson said the outages also affected the utility’s data collection system, so officials had limited information about where electricity was offline.
“We did have to go to certain facilities and visit those to track what was happening and monitor those in person," said Nelson.
In the middle of the emergency, water pressure in SUB’s distribution system dropped dangerously low. Nelson said this followed the loss of power at Willamette Wellfield, a water treatment facility.
On Jan. 17, SUB issued a boil water notice, affecting 45,000 houses. But according to the consultant’s report, the notice was too wide-reaching for SUB to deliver the news through their typical methods—posting notes on front doors.
Instead, the report said the utility relied heavily on social media to communicate with customers, even though some households didn’t have working internet. And it said some of the staff working the SUB phonelines were not told immediately made aware of the notice, leading to miscommunications with the public.
It took more than two weeks from the start of the ice storm before SUB completed initial power restorations. In public meetings that followed, some customers said they were frustrated by the utility’s handling of the crisis and communication with public. Today, Nelson said SUB’s leadership has heard that feedback.
“Our regular storm response protocols, which served us well in prior events, didn't meet our customer needs," he said. "And I do want to assure our customers that we have spent the last year working very hard to make improvements, and we've made good progress.”
Since the ice storm ended, Nelson said SUB has done incident command training with staff, to address gaps in communication between staff. He said it's also expanded its text alert program, to distribute reliable messages to the public when power lines go down.
The City of Springfield is also pursuing a license for a new emergency radio station.
"An AM radio station signal may be able to reach folks that otherwise would not be able to be reached," said Nelson. "So we're happy to hear that the city of Springfield is moving with that direction as well."
In the future, SUB is looking to build back-up generators at three of its facilities—its electric service center, its water service center, and the Willamette Wellfield.
The utility applied for a FEMA grant for these projects in 2022, and Nelson said he’s still hopeful it will be approved. But if that doesn’t happen soon, Nelson said SUB may fund a back-up generator at Willamette Wellfield itself.
“Although it would be better financially to the community if we could get some external funding to help support that capital investment, that backup generation would have really made the difference," said Nelson.
Meanwhile, Smith says EWEB has partnered with McKenzie Fire and Rescue, to provide in-person power updates for rural areas that were difficult to reach during the outages.
The ice storm has cost both utilities millions of dollars. Smith says expenses are still rolling in, as EWEB is doing a major renovation on a transmission line which sustained damage during the storm.
To pay for these repairs, the utilities have each used their respective reserve funds. But in the coming months, they said FEMA could reimburse them for up to 75% of the costs.
