Lincoln Electric System crews are making steady progress restoring power after strong thunderstorms swept through the area early Thursday morning. Joe Cave, manager of system operations for LES, says the storms knocked out power to about 1,300 customers at the peak of the outages around 6 a.m.
As of 10:30 Thursday morning, that number had been reduced to roughly 133 customers. Cave says most of the damage was caused by high winds bringing down trees and large limbs onto overhead power lines. Crews have spent the morning clearing debris, repairing damaged equipment, and replacing broken utility poles.
One of the more significant trouble spots involved multiple power poles snapped and lying on the ground, requiring additional crews and materials to complete repairs. Despite the widespread storm damage reported across southeast Nebraska, Cave says the number of outages was lower than crews initially expected given the strength of the winds.
At last report, about 15 outage incidents involving multiple customers remained active, with all restoration work assigned to crews and repairs continuing throughout the day.