The cleanup from storms that struck Platte County about a week ago is still under way, with Platte City residents stating power outages from the storm are just the latest in a series of outages plaguing the older portions of the city.
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, June 8, the National Weather Service reported four tornadoes touched down across the Kansas City area. No tornadoes were reported in Platte County, but damage along the Fourth Street corridor in Platte City was significant, with extensive tree damage. Some houses and vehicles also suffered damage from falling trees and power, telephone and internet outages persisted late into the week.
Evergy reported that across its service area about 80,000 residents were without power. By the end of the storms, the utility deployed more than 1,000 field personnel, mostly consisting of line workers, and reported about 80 percent of customers had the power back on by the end of the day Wednesday.
Residents along Fourth Street say there have been numerous power outages over the past months, leading them to question what could be done to address this problem.
Platte City administrator DJ Gehrt said about a month ago city officials, including mayor Tony Paolillo and district county commissioner Joe Vanover, met with Evergy about the outages.
The particular areas of concern are north of Highway 92 and along Second and Fourth streets.
Evergy’s data showed most outages were caused by power line interaction with trees, Gehrt said.
“At that meeting Evergy committed to a full-scale tree trimming program in Platte City this summer, improvements to small animal protections at substations and a substantial rehabilitation project of one of the major substations feeding Platte City,” Gehrt said. “The substation rehabilitation is scheduled for fall 2022.”
It’s unclear what effect, if any, the storm damage will have on the time table for this project.
In the meanwhile, Gehrt said residents can drop off tree branches at Riverview Park or cut it into four to six foot lengths and place it at the curb. Contractors will continue picking up limbs for as long as help is needed.
“A hard date for the curbside pick up to end has not yet been established,” Gehrt said. “That date will be posted on the city’s website and provided to local media as soon as it is set.”
