Chapter 11
Storms and disasters have
tested Verendrye over the years
The 1983 ice storm was such a significant event that lineworkers and members who helped restore power were given a commemorative belt buckle.
1983 ICE STORM WAS A BEAST
Y
“I’ve never seen an ice storm as bad as that ‘83
storm in our area,” said Gene Shoenberg, who farms
southwest of Velva.
ear-by-year, mile-by-mile, Verendrye
Electric has built an electrical distribution
The storm started on Friday, March 4, when it
began to rain. Temperatures hovered right around
system serving thousands of member-
owners. In one weekend in March 1983, a large
the freezing mark, and the rain eventually froze,
part of that system was destroyed. Poles snapped
layering poles and wires with thick ice.
and splintered after freezing rain coated wires with
Schoenberg remembers Verendrye calling him
five pounds of ice per foot in places, leaving over a
at 3:30 Sunday morning asking him to drive from
thousand members in the dark.
his farm to Velva to report on how many poles
were toppled. His farm is about 12 miles south of
Verendrye has faced the wrath of Mother
Nature on several occasions, but the 1983 ice storm
Velva and five miles west. “I drove towards Ruso
remains the disaster to which all other disasters
and Velva to count poles and there were about 34
are compared.
down,” Schoenberg said. “When I left Velva and
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This photo shows a 1,000-foot radio tower that was knocked down in the 1983 ice storm. Photo courtesy of the Minot Daily News.
went back home about four or five hours later, I
counted at least 80 poles down.”
Verendrye’s report in North Dakota REC/RTC
By Monday, March 7, the beast damaged 2,200
poles, downed more than 100 miles of power lines
and darkened the lives of 1,145 members. Hardest
described the storm as a beautiful and ugly sight.
hit were the Ryder-Makoti and Burlington-Des Lacs
“March indeed roared in like an icy beast. Beautiful,
areas where rainfall was heaviest.
yes – as ice entombed grasses and trees, creating a
Larry Erickson, who lives south of Minot,
fairyland in the glistening sunshine. For an electrical
remembers being without power for several days.
cooperative, however, the beauty was transformed
Erickson, whose father Lawrence Erickson served
into a beast.”
on the Verendrye board from 1948 to 1969, was one
1
of several farmers who helped Verendrye recover
1
Verendrye Electric Cooperative. “Beauty versus Beast!” North
Dakota REC/RTC Magazine. April 1983, 61-62.
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from the storm.
“We had a tractor with a dozer and we helped
open roads for Verendrye,” Erickson said. “Out
here, people always work together to help out
their neighbors.” He and his family kept warm
with a kerosene heater, which became a popular
item because of the outage. “We hauled around a
kerosene heater to keep warm and we even used it
to heat up our coffee,” he said.
It is common for Verendrye to enlist the help
of members to repair outages, but in 1983 some
members helped in unique ways. Members were
organized into what were called “ice beater” crews.
Dozens of men would go out with Verendrye
lineworkers and beat ice off of downed wires
that were de-energized. Curt Hall, a Verendrye
lineworker from 1976 to 2011, serving as foreman in
Berthold before retiring, recalled recruiting people in
Berthold to help de-ice the wires.
“The ice was so thick, you couldn’t put the line
back up,” Hall said in a 2011 interview. “We would
get whoever would want to help and they would
beat the ice off of the lines with bats and hammers.”
Schoenberg was part of a crew assigned to beat
the ice off of downed lines. He said over a few days,
he and five or six other men cleared ice off of about
seven miles of line. The crew lined up about 100
feet apart from each other and would whack the
power lines with broken ax handles or sticks. “You
had to hit the lines at least every foot and when you
got to where the next guy was done clearing the
ice, you would leap frog ahead to the next section,”
Schoenberg said.
This one-foot piece of ice weighing five pounds was taken off of a
power line near Des Lacs after the 1983 ice storm.
Don Roen, a former Verendrye board member,
was enlisted to be in charge of a crew of area farmers
whose task was to remove hardware from broken
poles that could be re-used on new poles. Some
power lines fell onto frozen sloughs and became
stuck on the ice. “The lines froze into the ice and we
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Don Roen, left, and his son help remove hardware from broken poles
after the 1983 ice storm that to this day is the most damaging storm
Verendrye Electric has encountered.
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were chipping away the ice to get them loose,” Roen
said. “That was the toughest part of the job because
you had to be careful not to hit the wires as you
were chipping.”
The storm caused major problems for KXMCTV, a Verendrye member with a broadcast tower
southwest of Minot. The storm toppled their tower,
leaving Minot and the surrounding area without
a KXMC broadcast for a few days. David Reiten,
general manager of KXMC-TV, said he was working
in Dickinson at the time, but he remembers his
father, Chester, telling him about the storm.
“We were not on air at all for a few days until
we got what was called a stub tower,” Reiten said.
The stub tower allowed the station to broadcast, but
the range was limited. Reiten said it took weeks to
regain their full capabilities and they installed a new
tower later that year. “It was quite an experience,
but we ended up getting a new tower with a
better antenna.”
It took 175 workers, 28 bucket trucks and 36
diggers to help repair the damage from the storm.
A number of other electric cooperatives and
contractors helped. The total damage cost about
$2.5 million to repair, which is about $5.8 million in
today’s dollars.
Many storms have caused damage to Verendrye’s
system over the years, but most pale in comparison
to the 1983 storm. More recent storms include those
in the winter of 2009-10. That winter there were
three notable storms – a blizzard Christmas Day that
brought two feet of snow to some areas in one day,
a January blizzard with winds approaching 50 miles
an hour, and an Easter weekend blizzard bringing
heavy, wet snow that damaged 100 poles.
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A Verendrye truck is stuck in the snow in a blizzard in January 2010 after sliding in the ditch.
A January 2010 blizzard didn’t stop Jim Hagen and other lineworkers from restoring an outage
south of Minot. Winds gusting more than 40 mph reduced visibility and made work difficult.
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A farmer helps pull a Verendrye bucket truck through muddy fields in April 2010 after a Good Friday storm knocked out power to 300 members.
The Easter 2010 outages affected 300 Verendrye
damage from a snowstorm again in the fall of 2013
that caused millions of dollars in damage.
members, some going without power for three
The ice storm of 1983 has gone down in history
nights. Other cooperatives didn’t fare as well in
2010. The Easter outage at Mor-Gran-Sou Electric
as the worst to hit Verendrye Electric members, and
Cooperative, based in Mandan, took down 600
to this day it is a reminder of how Mother Nature
miles of power lines and damaged 12,000 poles.
can be a beast.
Verendrye Electric and several other cooperatives
“After seeing the devastation and hardship the
and contractors were brought in to help rebuild
1983 ice storm created, when I hear about other
Mor-Gran-Sou’s power lines after that storm.
storms, I have a soft spot for those who are going
Cooperatives in southwest North Dakota and parts
through it,” Roen said.
of South Dakota also experienced widespread
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Verendrye Electric Cooperative’s Velva headquarters was protected by a dike during the 2011 Souris River flood. Fortunately, it was not needed
because the dikes along the river saved Velva from flooding.
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Several Verendrye employees help fellow coworker D.J. Randolph
sandbag his home near Logan during the 2011 flood.
FLOOD OF 2011 AFFECTED
VERENDRYE MEMBERS AND
EMPLOYEES
The Souris River flood of 2011 didn’t cause as
much damage to Verendrye’s system as the 1983 ice
storm, but its impacts were longer lasting and more
devastating to people who were affected.
Sirens sounded in Minot on June 22 at 12:57
p.m., signaling the dikes could no longer hold back
the floodwaters. Approximately 12,000 people had
to evacuate their homes. Although Verendrye does
not serve the center of Minot, it does have hundreds
of accounts in city limits that were flooded.
Water damaged about $2.4 million worth of
electrical meters, transformers, underground power
lines and power poles in Verendrye’s system. The
damage occurred in Minot and in rural areas in the
river valley. Nearly 1,000 Verendrye members were
affected with approximately 670 losing power for
some period of time.
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Flooding was so severe in Minot that water touched this railroad bridge
on Sixth Street near City Hall.
“A flooding catastrophe is much more
devastating than an ice storm. When we have an ice
storm, we know where the power line is down and
we’ve got kind of a feeling for how long it’s going
to take to get it back in. With this disaster, we had
no idea what had all failed in the river valley,” said
Verendrye Manager Bruce Carlson.
The flood also caused logistical problems for
Verendrye workers because water blocked major
transportation routes in Minot and Velva, resulting
in miles of backed-up traffic in some areas. The
cooperative also built a dike around its Velva office,
but it was not needed because dikes along the river
held and saved Velva.
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Members of the North Dakota National Guard toss sandbags to increase the height of dikes in Velva during the 2011 flood. Both the Guard and
airmen from the Minot Air Force Base were instrumental in helping save Velva. ND National Guard Photo.
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Transportation was made difficult during the 2011 flood. In this
picture, U.S. Highway 52 just west of Velva was impassible.
Photo by Karen Thomas.
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A power line owned by Central Power Electric Co-op., Verendrye’s
transmission cooperative, was taken down by floodwaters in 2011.
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Homes of four Verendrye employees were
flooded and several Verendrye employees helped
their fellow co-workers, family and friends recover
from the most devastating flood the region has
ever faced.
The flood provided cooperatives across the state
a chance to live up to the principle of commitment
to community by helping to restore electrical
infrastructure in Minot’s Oak Park in 2012. More
than 60 cooperative employees from 14 cooperatives
helped on the project.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have
imagined having 60-plus REC employees from across
the state helping with a project this large,” Carlson
said. “It was a great day in Oak Park.” The project
was important to the city because the park was the
location of a community event that marked the oneyear anniversary of when the sirens sounded.
“This means a great deal to the community,”
Minot Mayor Curt Zimbelman told the cooperative
employees. “This will be a big lift for our city.”
Pictured are Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
manufactured homes that were used as housing for people displaced
from their homes after the 2011 Souris River flood. Verendrye Electric
served around 1,100 FEMA homes on four group sites and on many
private sites. The installation of power for the homes at the groups sites
was a massive undertaking that Verendrye Electric completed in about
two and a half months in order to help people get into the homes as
soon as possible.
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More than 60 electric cooperative employees from 14 cooperatives around the state helped rewire Minot’s Oak Park in June 2012.
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