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Rolla utility crews, mutual‑aid crews restore power after tornado; recovery and FEMA aid remain uncertain
Summary
A late‑season tornado cut power to most of Rolla; RMU and mutual‑aid crews restored service to most customers within two weeks while city and utility leaders assess damages, estimated near $3 million, and await possible FEMA assistance.
Rolla utility and emergency crews scrambled after a tornado sliced across the city, leaving about 8,000 of the utility’s roughly 10,000 customers without power immediately after the storm and forcing a weeks‑long restoration effort that relied on mutual aid from neighboring utilities.
Rodney Bourne, general manager of Rolla Municipal Utilities, said crews worked around the clock with assistance from other Missouri city utilities and co‑ops to bring neighborhoods back online and to repair a utility system heavily damaged by downed poles and transformers. “About 8,000 of our 10,000 customers were out of power immediately after the storm,” Bourne said during the council meeting, describing the early scale of the outage and the fast response.
The city and RMU prioritized re‑energizing isolated substations that would return power to clustered neighborhoods, Bourne said, and marked milestones as lights came back on. By the…
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