Wednesday storms knock out power for thousands of Iowans

Storms that ripped through portions of Iowa Wednesday, some of which resulted in tornado touch downs, may have knocked out power for thousands, but utility officials were quick to bring the lights back on.

Alliant Energy Spokesman Mike Wagner said about 2,500 Alliant customers lost power Wednesday as a result of storm damage.

Customers in communities across Iowa including Central City, Murray, Prairieburg, Letts and Osceola were the hardest hit, Wagner said.

'Most of the damage was the kind of storm damage we see during storms like this, such as trees down,” Wagner said. 'We were able to work through the night and restore power to about everybody that can take power.”

Wagner said only a handful of customers were without power as of Thursday afternoon.

For MidAmerican Energy, one of Wednesday's tornadoes - in Marion County - took down multiple transmission structures near Pleasantville and ultimately 1,172 customers lost power starting at about 6 p.m.

Adam Jacobi, public relations representative with MidAmerican, said power began being restored to customers by about 9:15 p.m. and all but 11 had power back by 11 p.m.

On Thursday, repair work still was underway to restore power for the remaining two customers without. All power was expected to be online by Thursday evening, he said.

In Black Hawk County, storm damage took out power for 2,785 Waterloo customers at about 6:47 p.m. All power was restored within about 20 minutes, Jacobi said.

Other small outages occurred around Northeast Iowa during the storm, but all power was restored soon after, he added.

Jacobi attributed the quick response to proper planning.

'We're always monitoring weather several days in advance and planning to have crews where the reports say there's going to be the biggest effect. We had multiple crews on call in central Iowa,” he said.

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