Open house showcases how Ameren Illinois operates in times of emergencies

QUINCY — Ameren Illinois was the host of an open house Tuesday morning to promote emergency preparedness at its Quincy Operating Center, 700 Jersey.

The event was open to the public, with interactive displays and Ameren employees onsite to explain the equipment and their methods. Guests were allowed to ride in the bucket of Ameren’s highest-reaching truck.

“I’m actually kind of afraid of heights,” said Brandyn Ryan, an Ameren lineman of nearly 20 years. “But I can control what I’m doing up here, so it doesn’t bother me as bad.”

The view of Quincy was serene from 100 feet off the ground. The Bayview Bridge peeked out from behind trees of mossy green and golden crop fields laid beyond the Mississippi River, while clouds of gray and glum taunted the Ameren crews below.

Limitations have been established for how many hours a lineman can work. Restoring power during weather-related outages used to necessitate 40-hour workdays. Showing the public how Ameren crews restore power in extreme conditions was the idea of the open house.

“It’s just to show the community the equipment Ameren has (and) how we respond to certain outages (and) gas leaks,” Ameren spokesperson Ellie Leonard said of the event. “Just creating an awareness for the work that Ameren crews do in cases of emergencies.”

One of the booths at the open house described the anatomy of gas leaks. Since gas is odorless, a harmless but foul-smelling chemical is added to make detecting leaks much easier. The smell is similar to that of rotting eggs, which was conveniently provided at the booth via scratch and sniff cards.

Another booth went over the importance of calling Ameren’s underground locating services (811) before digging to avoid hitting gas lines. Calling 811 puts in a request for location services to determine which parts of an area are safe to excavate, as required by Illinois law for both civilians and professionals. 

“If you hit something and you didn’t call, it’s too late,” said Robert Trinkle, a locating services supervisor. 

Gas concentration levels below 5 percent and above 15 percent are safe, but levels between could have “explosive” consequences; Trinkle said if gas levels are present, even the static produced from a hand making contact with a metal tumbler cup could cause a reaction. 

“If you smell gas in your home, we always say, ‘Don’t pick up the phone, don’t shut off the stove, don’t do anything like that. Get out,’” Trinkle said.

Ameren employees explained the various resources they’ve attained to make their operations more efficient, like a new mobile command center that costs $150,000. It spans 32 feet and is equipped with several monitors, heating and air conditioning, storage space for administrative supplies, vests and hardhats, Wifi, an AT&T and Verizon sim card, various cables and a generator. It’s everything crews need to do their jobs in rural areas, eliminating the need for crews to go back and forth between worksites and Ameren operating centers, resulting in issues getting resolved quicker. 

Crews had to turn rural high school gyms, football fields, community centers and shopping malls into makeshift operation centers before to the mobile command center. In one instance, crews had to wait 12 hours to obtain the keys to a high school gym they needed to work out of.

“It takes the place of having to work out of the back of a pickup truck. You’ve got someplace to sit down, you’ve got the network capability, everything we can think of,” said Tony O’Neal, an emergency manager for Ameren Illinois. “Crews aren’t having to go as far. They’ve got materials on-site … All that stuff can be brought to that site, and that’s the idea of this here.”

Materials trucks are utilized in rural areas, which function like electric and gas-specific hardware stores on wheels, providing rolls of wire, transformers, poles, meter sets and other necessary equipment to crews as they work at various job sites. The goal is to reduce the time it takes to resolve issues with as much efficiency as possible. 

“That’s one thing Ameren’s really focused on is customer service, and our response time as far as getting the people’s power back on in a timely manner,” employee Garrett Yackley said. “It’s something that we really strive to get better at every time.”

More information about Ameren Illinois can be found on its website.