A year after the derecho, recovery isn’t complete but the City of Mount Vernon and City of Lisbon are nearing the end of clean-up efforts for each community.
According to Mount Vernon city administrator Chris Nosbisch, 90 percent of the damage from the storm in Mount Vernon was to the tree canopy and power lines.
According to Lisbon city administrator Brandon Siggins, the damage from the storm in Lisbon impacted a significant number of trees, but also damaged some city owned properties and buildings.
“We’re nearing a total of $1 million in damages thus far,” Siggins said. “Every time we turn around, we come across another building that saw some type of damage that can be attributed to the storm.”
Among the damaged buildings in Lisbon are the barns on the future Nature Park, with the city still working on getting bids to stabilize the buildings so more significant repairs to buildings can be made.
Lisbon also saw significant damage to the baseball fields and softball fields and temporary lights were used this summer.
Alliant Energy replaced more than 3,600 electrical poles and 6 million feet of electrical wire following the storm, according to Melissa McCarville of Alliant Energy. Six million feet of electrical wire is more than 1,200 mies, which would be the distance to Cedar Rapids and Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. The number of electrical poles amounted to what usually takes Alliant Energy 10 months to replace.
Alliant Energy had noticed power outages from the storm before it hit the Cedar Rapids community, but a significant amount of the damage from the storm was definitely seen in communities along the Hwy. 30 corridor, including Ames, Marshalltown, Cedar Rapids, Mount Vernon and Lisbon.
“We had 341 communities and more than 256,000 customers in Alliant Energy’s service area who were impacted,” McCarville said.
Alliant worked as quickly and safely as possible to restore power to all customers in all the communities they served.
“While some communities had power restored sooner than others, restoration was dependent on the damage level to the area,” McCarville said. “Also, power was restored to different parts of communities at different times, as we worked to get the lights on for more and more customers. Some individual homes within those communities may not have been able to have power restored as soon as others due to the damage to their homes.”
McCarville noted since the derecho, workers at Alliant energy have continued to work to inspect the power circuits that were impacted by the storm to see if any additional work was needed. All of those circuits were inspected by the Iowa Utilities Board.
“We assessed the damage and strengthened the repairs we made soon after the storm, to ensure safe and reliable service for customers,” McCarville said. “Our team works hard to ensure the grid is strong and resilient. The system is performing very well through several storm events we have experienced after the derecho.”
McCarville noted that while Alliant Energy, like most other Iowans, never wants to see a derecho or other major storm impact communities in Iowa, the workers are always prepared to jump into action every day.
“We work every day to strengthen the system post-derecho and in anticipation of the next storm, and the grid continues to perform very well,” McCarville said. “Additionally, Alliant Energy recently announced our 1 Million Trees initiative to help restore the tree canopy that was lost. Alliant Energy plans to plant 1 million trees in our service areas (in Iowa and Wisconsin) over the next 10 years. This equates to about one tree for each of our customers.”
Nosbisch said minutes after the storm ended, that city employees got to the immediate work of clearing roadways of trees and downed power lines to allow emergency vehicle access to homes in the city of Mount Vernon, a process that took two to three days to complete. Once a majority of streets now had at least one lane of traffic in, city crews took additional time to clear trees that were within the city’s right of way.
The City of Lisbon followed a similar process and had city crews out cleaning up damage immediately following the storm. Most of the damage was cleaned up from city streets in less than a week.
“We have plans in place for these types of situations,” Siggins said.
Nosbisch estimates the city is now 75 percent complete with the clean-up from the storm, with tree removal and stump removal in Mount Vernon still ongoing.
Elliott and Davis Park had the most physical damage of the city properties, with Elliott Park losing a portion of the backstop of the ball fields, Nosbisch said.
“From a perspective of what looked like the most damage, though, the number of trees we lost at Nature Park was significant,” Nosbisch said. “From property cost and clean-up efforts, Elliott Park probably had the highest costs of damage to repair.”
When it came to lessons learned in the derecho, Nosbisch doesn’t think any community in Iowa was prepared for entire communications networks to go down at once.
“We lost cell phone coverage in the entire southeast portion of the state within an hour of the storm hitting,” Nosbisch said. “We as a city had to think through what we needed to do when it came to communicating in different parts of the city.”
Nosbisch said their solution was that the Mount Vernon Police Department and staff communicate with people and citizens they saw.
Siggins agreed that the loss of communications was a big hurdle.
“Luckily, Linn County Public Service had a radio system for public servants that didn’t go down during the storms,” Siggins said. “In cases of storms, we now require any city worker to have those radios handy for communication purposes because we don’t know the next storm is going to derail cellular communications for a number of days.”
Nosbisch said the derecho was also a test of resources countywide.
“As much planning as we do county wide because of Linn County Emergency Management, none of the scenarios we ever prepared for ever had a disaster that would impact every community in Linn County at the same time,” Nosbisch said. “Luckily, Mount Vernon didn’t have many people who were displaced from the storm, because the Red Cross of Iowa had several of those cases in Cedar Rapids to deal with. Resources countywide that might be needed in the case of a storm were definitely stressed.”
The third issue that Mount Vernon realized is the need for all of the city buildings to have generators in case of an emergency.
While Mount Vernon City Hall had an emergency generator and electricity throughout the storm, the new Mount Vernon police department on Mount Vernon Road and the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center did not have emergency generators installed at the time. The city is looking into a generator at the wellness center as a future investment, and the police station’s generator was approved shortly after the derecho.
“Mount Vernon has done a good job of having separate buildings to help serve the community, with a building in the south, a building in the north and a building in city center,” Nosbisch said.
Siggins noted that his biggest lesson learned when it comes to dealing with a crisis like the derecho is making sure everything is properly documented for repairs and reimbursements. As a city administrator moving into the role six months after the fact, that was one of the harder steps of the derecho.
Nosbisch said that he estimates the city will be reimbursed roughly $300,000 from Federal Emergency Management Association and state disaster funding for the emergency, with the reimbursement holding until the tree removal project is completed.
That was the most significant cost for the city, with the original tree removal bid estimated at $187,000.
“Total Tree Care has found trees that can be saved with cabling or other efforts that are less costly than removing an entire tree, so that estimate could be less when the project is completed,” Nosbisch said.
Nosbisch said that clean-up efforts amounted to $60,000 throughout the city, and debris grinding amounted to another $40,000. The amount estimated for all costs associated with the derecho is $400,000.
Nosbisch noted that the city of Mount Vernon did not have any equipment damaged in the storm, but the city did use some newly purchased equipment a lot more due to the storm, including an end loader in the clean up efforts.
“We did put in several hours for city equipment to help with the clean-up efforts, but nothing suffered significant damage,” Nosbisch said.
In Lisbon, the repairs to the ball parks were made in time for the seasons to happen this summer, with temporary lights installed at the baseball fields due to the parts not being able to be installed before the season start. Fences at the ball parks are installed, and the dugout and concession stand were repaired. Siggins noted there are a few fences that still need to be fixed in the community, which have been delayed because of the number of fences across southeast Iowa contractors are still repairing. There are a number of street signs that will need to be replaced, but those that are traffic control or public safety signs (like stop signs and speed limit signs) have been replaced.
One thing that Nosbisch noted is that the significant clean-up from the derecho’s damage took a total of nine days because of citizens’ help.
“That clean-up effort was because of the help and assistance of Mount Vernon citizens and members of the Mount Vernon business community,” Nosbisch said. “That’s a testament to the people who live here that we were able to have most of our storm clean-up completed in the course of a little more than a week.”
Siggins reiterated that message.
“The key thing I will note is how many citizens worked together following the derecho to help with cleanup of properties and get things ready for the city to come in and clean up,” Siggins said. “The derecho was a tough situation, and it’s one where everyone pulled together to get things done.”
Siggins noted that while a significant amount of damage, like fallen tree branches and building damage is cleaned up currently, there are still remnants from the storm, like stumps that need grinding and minor damage to other buildings.
“It’s probably going to take us five or more years for this storm to be seen as nothing but a memory,” Siggins said.
A Mount Vernon Police Department vehicle surveys Second Avenue S.W. minutes after the storm passed through the area. Trees, branches and power lines were down throughout Mount Vernon and Lisbon following the storm.