Frozen tree limbs crashed on power lines and ripped the meter housings apart from homes, leaving 420,000 homes without power in Kansas City.
John Tann, president and owner of Tann Electric, said all 15 of his electricians responded to the disaster, which was crowned as the worst ice storm in Kansas City’s history.
“Our philosophy is to get the power back on to the people as soon as we can,” Tann said. “We’ve been fairly successful in getting people’s power back on the day they call us.”
Tann Electric, a service company that has been in business for more than 10 years, specializes in electrical and datacom work for residential customers. In the first few days of the ice storm, freezing rain coated the streets of Kansas City, transformers blew and entire neighborhoods turned pitch black. Tann said his customer service crew handled hundreds of phone calls.
“We tried to handle every call that came in," Tann said. "I know that we’ve had some customers say that they couldn’t get through, but we try to answer the phone and take calls every day.
Tann Electric temporarily lost power, but with its computers on backup and its phone system still in operation, they continued to take service calls.
“We had a few less lights, but we kept on going,” Tann said. “Since the storm, we have probably taken care of in the neighborhood of 250 calls.”
