Alliant: Majority of Customers To Have Power By Tuesday

Almost a week after our world changed in a matter of minutes, customers in Iowa left without power for the past week will soon see light at the end of the tunnel, according to Alliant Energy via the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

As of this writing, more than 40,000 people in Cedar Rapids still don't have the lights back on.  Alliant Vice President of Business Development, Joel Schmidt said, "we are committed to getting the transmission back on as quickly and as safely as possible."

The Iowa National Guard has been deployed to cities and towns, to help clean up debris and make way for the line crews being brought in from across the country to do their work, spending 16-hour days to make the above statement come to fruition.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from ITC Midwest, who, also according to the Gazette, maintains transmission lines for Alliant and other utilities, said the company has repaired 768 of the 1,215 miles of lines initially out of service. Their work has spanned 350 miles of which he said were in Linn County.

The first to get power back were "essential businesses" including grocery stores and gas stations, as well as public facilities like City Hall and the police and fire stations.

Linn County REC noted in the Gazette story that they were down to 17.5 percent of customers without power as of this writing. It may be difficult to appreciate that if you're among those still without, especially if you find out neighbors not far from you have gotten their power back while you still sit in the dark. But after a stressful few days, we can see there is headway being made in the thankless work the crews are putting in. If you see them, don't let their work remain thankless.