ATLANTIC, Iowa — It's a time-tested life lesson: When man comes up against Mother Nature, she tends to be the one with the power.
Throughout western Iowa last week, residents learned how true that can be. Tens of thousands of Iowans went without power for days.
Many were still waiting for help Saturday evening.
About 2,000 residents in Sioux City remained without power, MidAmerican Energy officials said. But service was expected to be restored by early Sunday evening to all remaining customers affected by the storm, MidAmerican said in a press release Sunday morning.
Line by line, repair crews worked their way down county roads and state highways, undoing the damage wrought when a midweek ice storm rained down on the region. But progress was slow.
The hardest-hit counties — Audubon, Calhoun, Carroll, Cass, Crawford and Sac — received an emergency declaration from Gov. Chet Culver that authorized the state to provide generators, cots, blankets and other assistance to the affected areas.
Culver also issued a declaration that temporarily lifted restrictions on commercial trucks to give repair crews greater freedom.
“We still have a great number of Carroll residents and rural residents without power,” Carroll Mayor Jim Pedelty said Saturday afternoon. “It's an ongoing battle. We have at least 200 to 300 power poles that have split and need to be replaced.”
Some rural Nebraska residents also were still without power.
“All of our neighbors were without power for at least a day. It really kind of put a stop to everything,” said Sue Anderson, who lives on a farm three miles west of Craig, Neb.
Anderson's electricity was restored Friday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after losing power.
The ice not only knocked out the power to Harriett Westergaard's home near Craig, it also caused the roof of her shed to cave in.
Her farm seven miles south of town was without electricity from 10:30 a.m. Wednesday to about 3 p.m. Friday. She said she heard things were even worse in West Point, Neb.
Mark Reinders, a spokesman for MidAmerican Energy in Council Bluffs, said contractors from 11 states were helping to restore power in Iowa.
In Cass County, Iowa, Darrell Kirchhoff was on his third day without power Friday when he went over to his father-in-law's house to continue a game of musical generators.
The two live just down the road from each other, and the heavy ice knocked out the power lines that serve both homes.
With one generator, Kirchhoff and his family moved it from appliance to appliance, trying to keep things in the freezer frozen, heat the house and keep everything else in working order.
It wasn't fun — “It stinks,” he said — but he knew it could be worse.
“Not everybody has a generator,” Kirchhoff said.
He hooked it up to a gas pump on the farm just north of Atlantic, trying to fuel a tractor that would help him clear snow, ice and fallen branches from the area.
Living at the end of the power line, he wasn't sure how soon he'd be able to put the generator away.
“The (repair) guys are doing what they can do,” Kirchhoff said.
Just down the road on Iowa Highway 173, four men from Cedar Falls, Iowa, were doing just that. “We're here to help, however long they need us,” said Craig Schwickerath.
For Kirchhoff, their work at his house was done by 4 p.m. Friday when the lights came back on.
The Cedar Falls Utilities crew had traveled the Atlantic area Friday, where Schwickerath used a digger derrick to right a lopsided power pole. His partners, Kurt Dralle and Mike Wildeboer, worked to replace bad parts with good ones.
“People gotta have those meters spinning,” Schwickerath said. “Gotta have that electricity.”
The Atlantic Municipal Utilities had contacted the group Thursday. Within hours, the repairmen had gone home, thrown some clothes together and hit the road. Friday was the first of several 15-hour days the workers were likely to put in trying to restore power to Atlantic-area residents.
Fallen tree branches lined the streets and covered lawns around town. At Annie Gutschenritter's home, her brother Donny Gutschenritter took a chainsaw to the splintered limbs and carried the pieces to his truck.
Annie Gutschenritter spent days without power, cuddling up to her gas fireplace for warmth.
“It's a disaster,” she said.
Her brother shrugged.
“We're better off than Haiti,” he said, prompting a nod of agreement from Annie.
“Amen.”
World-Herald staff writer Leia Mendoza contributed to this report.
Contact the writer:
444-1310, elizabeth.ahlin@owh.com
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