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We all appreciate the efforts of our linemen who gave up most or all of Christmas day with their families to get the power back on. Some of our crews started just before 4:00 am and worked through to 10:00 p.m. getting people back on. They also started early on Sunday, December 29th when the heavy snow, made heavier with rain, started bringing limbs and trees down on our lines and worked through until we got everyone back on New Years Eve. In addition, our engineering staff was out in the field helping the linemen, and all available inside employees were answering the phones. I lived for nearly 17 years in Alaska and yes, we did have more snow, but the snow was not followed by rain that made it so heavy and thick it was impossible to get through. In Alaska, almost everyone had snow machines that could be used to get around in storms like the one we had. The amount of snow removal equipment per mile of road was far higher than San Juan County. In spite of the fact that we didn't have the advantages here that our community in Alaska had, I think we did pretty well last week. The County road crews worked as well as they could with us to match priorities so we could get to the scene of an outage. I really appreciate their efforts to help us. I don't want those of you who spent many hours or days without power to think we are not thinking about you. I want to apologize for the terrible inconvenience you suffered without power when you needed it most. We have, however, made a lot of progress with our Storm Abatement Program since 1990. Back then, a storm like we had last week would have knocked to power off for many days and put most, if not all, of us in the dark. We are NOT resting on our laurels. We still have a lot of work to do. We are not going to stop until we can go to sleep during one of these storms and feel confident that we will not get an outage call in the middle of the night. We owe it to you and to our linemen and their families. Well, the Nutcracker will come around next year and by then, we will have a few more miles of line underground and many more danger trees trimmed or removed. My family and I will go to Seattle and enjoy ourselves, confident that the power is on back at home. Doug Bechtel
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