As of Saturday morning, 1100 Western Cooperative meters remain without power. As we continue to respond to the storm's effects, we ask for our members' patience. Significant progress has been made to this point, but Western will not be completely satisfied until every meter has been restored. Since Wednesday, 7100 meters have been re-energized with the hopes of having all major substation feeds powered by Saturday evening.

On Friday, line crews restored approximately 1000 meters, including Ellis East, Palco, Liebenthal, Schoenchen, and most of Redline. In addition, line crews made significant progress in other areas setting up Saturday to be another productive day.

Saturday's top priorities include Redline north, Gove north by late afternoon, and Ellis and Susank substations by Saturday evening.

Thank you to the mutual aid crews from Twin Valley Electric, Southern Pioneer, CMS Electric, Ninnescha, Prairie Land, J&J Contractors, and Sunflower. Having additional crews from around the state helping rebuild downed lines has massively boosted our restoration efforts.We understand that it is very frustrating when a neighbor has power and you don't.  Please be aware that sometimes during complicated repairs, you may have your lights come back on, only to have them go off again because we discover another problem that must be fixed. Often this may be because your home is on another circuit, or perhaps that your meter is damaged in a way that your neighbor's meter is not damaged.

For the safety of everyone, if you are using a portable electrical generator, do not tie it into your circuit panel. An improperly wired generator can send power into downed lines causing serious injury or death to you, a family member, a neighbor, or one of our repair crews. A generator can only be tied into a circuit panel if a licensed electrician has installed a transfer switch.

We would like to thank all of our employees and external crews who are working long hours as part of the restoration and response effort. We apologize for any inconvenience this event may have caused. Although we post service updates to social media, we do not monitor social media for reports of outages or emergencies. All emergencies must be reported by phone. To report an outage or a downed power line, you can call 1-800-456-6720.

Western Cooperative Electric Association is a member-owned cooperative headquartered in WaKeeney, Kansas. Established in 1945, Western now serves more than 12,000 meters and maintains over 4,000 miles of power lines across western and central Kansas. Together, with our members' help, Western Co-op is committed to building a stronger rural America. For more information about Western, visit www.westerncoop.com.