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The proximity of trees to power lines was a major factor in the power outages during the recent ice storm.

Consider Aquila: bad investments, bad stock price, big CEO bonuses, in the midst of a merger. There’s no way this company properly prepared and properly responded to a widespread, devastating ice storm last month, right?

Wrong, say not only company officials but also some of those on the outside who know the company best. While it does little to comfort people who went without power for as long as a week, Aquila’s response to last month’s ice storm included quicker response and more workers than St. Joseph’s last major ice storm in 1994, according to the officials and News-Press archives.

“Aquila can do some real stupid things, but to my knowledge they had the people in place and were able to bring people in from as far away as Colorado,” said Robert E. Grieves, of St. Joseph. Mr. Grieves managed engineering and construction for St. Joseph Light & Power from about 1970 to 1991, prior to Aquila’s purchase of the Northwest Missouri utility, which took effect in 2001.

Weather forecasts appeared dire by the weekend of Dec. 8 and never improved. A warm, wet front rode high in the sky above a typical December chill on the ground. Normally, the moist upper air is colder in the winter, causing snow or even sleet, but instead the precipitation fell as rain, not freezing until it hit the ground or trees.

Northwest Missouri literally experienced a thunderstorm of ice beginning late Monday evening, Dec. 10. At about 11:40 p.m., the first power outages began. In the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, limbs popped off trees like fireworks, complete with eerie blue-green flashes in the sky as power lines went down with the limbs.

Almost 59,000 homes and businesses were without power in Aquila’s former Light & Power area, which includes St. Joseph, Maryville, Savannah, Tarkio — basically all of Northwest Missouri — with ice ranging from more than a half-inch in St. Joseph to 2 inches farther north, said Tom Kelley, Aquila’s regional manager. More than 1 million people were without power from Oklahoma

to Illinois.

“From my perspective, we’ve never had a storm like that hit our entire system,” Mr. Kelley said.

Indeed, the December 1994 ice storm doesn’t seem to measure up, although many people have compared the two. In 1994, about 15,000 Light & Power customers lost power from up to a quarter-inch of ice, according to News-Press archives.

In 1994, Light & Power didn’t appear to fully grasp the extent of the damage on the first day. It first reported that about 5,000 people lost power, and it said it would fully restore power by the next day. In fact, it took six days. Light & Power at its peak had about 180 linemen working on the storm, most of whom were brought in from other area utilities.

Mr. Kelley described the 1994 response as “more reaction instead of being ready.”

“As Light & Power, we committed all those sins, thinking ‘Maybe it won’t get that bad,’” Mr. Kelley said. “With Aquila, it’s never been a concern ... If you got (help from another utility) before, you always had in the back of your mind that you can break the bank pretty quickly as a smaller company.”

In 2007, Aquila issued a press release in the hours leading up to the storm that it had 90 electrical workers and 85 tree trimmers en route to Northwest Missouri from other areas. Within three days, Aquila had 275 tree trimmers and 667 electrical workers involved in the recovery effort in Northwest Missouri, including 454 contract electrical workers from other companies, it said this week.

Bob Slater, a former Light & Power vice president, said Aquila’s response in terms of the number of workers was “tremendous.”

Another factor in preparedness comes long before the weather forecast: preventative tree trimming.

Aquila contracts with Asplundh for its tree trimming. Aquila said it didn’t have figures available on how much it spends or how many miles of tree trimming it performs each year, but it now has six or seven full-time crews, compared with three with Light & Power.

More accountability appears to be on order for tree trimming. The Missouri Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, adopted new tree-trimming rules in October that require annual reports on expenditures and miles of tree trimming. The rules came after Ameren was criticized for its tree trimming before a devastating 2006 ice storm in St. Louis.

Aquila says it uses a four- to five-year cycle of trimming trees at least eight feet away from power lines. But that program is primarily intended to keep trees from growing through power lines.

Tree trimming doesn’t account for a large ice accumulation that changes the shape of a tree, agreed Mr. Kelley and Mr. Grieves.

“In general, the storm was so great that it exceeded the design criteria for this area,” Mr. Grieves said.

Rep. Ed Wildberger, D-St. Joseph, is a former firefighter who served as St. Joseph’s emergency management coordinator in 1994. He said Aquila’s response was better this time around, even considering that the storm was much more widespread.

“If people look back at ’94 and more recently what happened in St. Louis, I think they’ll find Aquila learned from some mistakes,” Mr. Wildberger said.

If the anecdotal evidence doesn’t satisfy, people can look to the PSC, which announced Thursday that it will investigate storm preparations and responses of all investor-owned utilities in Missouri.

Comments can be mailed to the PSC at P.O. Box 360, Jefferson City, MO 65102. Comments also can be submitted by e-mail to pscinfo@psc.mo.gov, or by calling (800) 392-4211.