It turns out that not only can lighting strike twice, but so can a tornado.
That was the case on May 16 when the town of Worthington, home to Hoosier Energy’s Worthington Generating Station, found itself in the path of a tornado for the second time in two years.
“Boy, I had a pit in my stomach, because it had been only two years since the last tornado, and that was supposed to be a once-in-a-career occurrence,” said Aaron Price, Line Working Foreman.
There was no doubt that it happened a second time as video from the Worthington Pole Barn chronicled the tornado’s approach and destruction. It was not what Price was expecting that evening.
“It’s not looking too bad at the house, and on radar it looks like it’s breaking up,” Price said. “I pull up a video, and weather people are talking about Worthington and how people around Worthington needed to seek shelter immediately.”
And then his phone rang.
“I get a call from system control that they are literally watching a tornado pass by Worthington Primary from the security cameras on the microwave tower,” Price said.
Once the storm cleared, and it was safe to travel, Price and his Hoosier Energy colleagues got a chance to see the damage.
“We got our first look at the damage as the sun was starting to go down,” he said. “Once we got our first look at it, it was pretty obvious that this was going to be more of a marathon than a sprint. We weren’t going to get our lines back up in two days.
“It was about just as bad as we could have possibly imagined with structures down everywhere. They were falling across US 231, falling across some county roads and multiple distribution circuits. We had a pretty big mess.”
Indeed, with broken poles, twisted lines and structures, and lines lying on the ground, it was a mess. Fortunately, the units at the generating station were not damaged.
Price and company quickly put together a plan that ensured Hoosier’s distribution substations were back on power within hours.
“What we determined was getting the roads back open, getting the distribution crossings cleared, making everything safe and we also started on the 69kV at that point,” Price said. “Pretty much every department at Hoosier Energy you can think of was involved in getting these lines back up into the air, and I can’t thank everybody at Hoosier enough for the support.
“It was really a true Hoosier Energy all-hands-on-deck restoration.”