Businesses, residents restore normalcy after storm

Like a game of 52 card pick-up, Valley residents are still gathering the scattered pieces of their belongings after winds Friday redistributed trampolines, tarps, trash cans and assorted treasures out of lawns and across fields.

In the aftermath of the gale, which left more than 10,000 without power, some are doing a different type of inventory in an effort to be better prepared for the next storm.

Cheryll Heinze, director of public affairs for Matanuska Electric Association, said fewer than 100 homes were without power on Monday afternoon, and most of those at the end of lines, including along Petersville Road and at Caswell Lake.

“Our crews will be out all night tonight,” Heinze said.

Heinze said the storm was a wake-up call for many.

While some of the calls for help she received were legitimate emergencies for those without power, some showed another side of the crisis.

Heinze said one caller said he had an absolute emergency, telling her, “I am sitting in my living room in a down vest.” When Heinze pressed him for details on his “emergency,” he reiterated that he had to wear a down vest to be comfortable in his living room.

Heinze said many Valley residents simply were not prepared for an extended power outage.

“If this were at 40 below and we were out for three or four days, this could be a major catastrophe,” Heinze said.

It was, Heinze said, a heads-up for MEA as well, uncovering some seams in its system MEA staff didn’t know they had.

The phone system overloaded during the crisis, staff couldn’t reach personnel at radio station KMBQ and coordination between linemen and firefighters had to be accomplished by relaying messages through a squad car radios.

On Tuesday, Heinze meets with Palmer Fire Chief John McNutt, Palmer Public Safety Director Jon Owen and Mat-Su Borough Emergency Services personnel to fix some of the cracks the high winds exposed.

Heinze said she was frustrated when she could not reach radio station personnel over the weekend to get information out about the outages.

“It was a huge problem,” she said. She called the number they’d used in the past, but there was no forwarding call to a weekend contact.

Equally as frustrated was Ray Babowicz, operations director at KMBQ, who broadcast the information he received Friday but had no updates for the rest of the weekend.

“I can only report the information that’s given me and I did not get a call,” Babowicz told the Frontiersman Monday.

Somehow Babowicz’s cell phone number, which was the new contact for urgent broadcasts, was not available to Heinze, and neither knew there was the glitch.

Both pledged to make it work better in the future.

The lack of communication left people like Natasha Pineda of Wasilla wondering how long she and her two young children would be without power. A neighbor’s tree pulled the electric line out of her house along the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, and while she had an electrician fix the connector to the home within hours, Pineda’s power wasn’t restored until Monday morning.

While she said she had supplies and could deal with that, knowing more would have helped. She couldn’t get a call through to MEA over the weekend, and finally took her freezer meats to a friend and her children into Anchorage to stay.

“It would have been nice to know what was going on,” Pineda said. “It was just kind of a challenge.”

The outage was a challenge for many. Posters to the Frontiersman’s Facebook fan page gave some colorful descriptions of what they lost — and gained — in the big wind.

“I lost my pool … Gone with the wind … but the wind brought us a tent,” posted Lina N. Poulson.

“I wound up with two blue tarps … Or as we call it in the Valley: a new roof,” quipped Todd Stafford. Four people liked this comment.

Several others said they lost sleep.

In the aftermath, and with termination dust settled on local peaks, many Valley residents say they plan to store better supplies in preparation for the next big blow or other disruption to their lives. Generators are high on many people’s lists, but those may be hard to find for a little while. There was a run on generators at Valley stores, including Lowe’s and AIH, according to staff at the two Wasilla stores.

“We sold more generators in the last two days than we do in a year,” said Ron Reynolds, sales specialist for inside garden at Lowe’s.

Pineda said a generator is on her wish list, too.

Other Facebookers suggested they’ll be stocking up on such items as extra batteries, quilts, plenty of water, lanterns and propane heaters.

MEA’s Heinze said she hopes everyone learns a lesson from the windy days of late September 2010. That is what she said she and the MEA staff intend to do.

“We’ll learn from it and go on and make it better,” Heinze said.