This has been the most amazing and fast power outage repair situation for a metropolitan city and its surrounding towns, considering the fact that 125,000 homes were cut off from electricity one week ago Friday and that many downed power lines had been tangled around fallen trees. Another storm occurred during the repair time, something else to delay workers, not fun to be up high, scrambling for cover with more danger moving into the area.

I was impressed with the high level of coordination by OPPD, the City of Omaha, Salvation Army, Red Cross and other cities' departments (like Kansas City, MO) who sent repair and volunteer personnel to help us. They were able to move equipment and personnel in to areas of destruction quickly to remove trees as well as restore power in record time.

When you are cut off from the outside world, it does not feel like "record time" but when we learned the range of damage, that the entire city had received destruction from way out west all the way down, twenty to forty plus miles to the Missouri River, it puts repair timing into perspective.

I was one of those enduring the outage, trying to work with medical conditions in our home and keep an Alzheimer patient entertained without enough light or hot food and no refrigeration to keep her medical eye drops cooled. I exclaimed with a loud shout and clapped my hands enthusiastically after going fifteen hours without lights or power when it surprised me by suddenly coming back on at 7:00 AM last Saturday! Wow...that early in the day?! Workers were relentless in helping to relieve everyone's distress and suffering. I have never appreciated bright light so much in my life as when my lamp suddenly popped on again, heralding the completed repairs. Thank you, thank you a thousand times over.

It was great to hear that Kansas City and other cities' repair units came up to assist our own Omaha Public Power District. I am assuming they were paid and for that, we thank the City of Omaha for being willing to bring outside help in. We know it costs a bundle. Not all cities allow it and citizens suffer greatly without that option. More storms are coming; please keep money in the bank for those continuing needs. Life is not "as usual" any more. Your efforts on our behalf meant so much.

COMMENDATIONS:
I want to thank ALL of these workers and those who manned the information centers and assignments because these electrical repairmen (or repairwomen?) left their homes, stayed with all of us in Omaha for a solid week, missing the Fourth of July holiday yesterday on top of all else that they had sacrificed for us. It was a tremendous feat and we appreciate our city and the other city or state units so very much. It was a great comfort after being blasted with severe weather week after week after an equally rough ice winter this year.

I hope all of the workers and volunteers were not injured nor dealing with many discomforts that may have been suffered with so much intensive labor, hour after hour, day after day. At times, when I saw television footage, I was praying for your backs to not go out. Just the simple act of dragging away heavy tree branches is enough to put spinal vertebrae out of alignment, causing pinched nerves and immobilizing you.

As of yesterday, "just a few" homes remained without power, homes where the repairs require the rebuilding of larger outside structures. That is an astounding statistic after reeling from the 80 to 110 mph winds eight days ago.

You did well, you really, really did well. May God bless you abundantly for giving to everyone in such an efficient manner. Again, thank you.