Friday night, March 14, 2025, a tornado touched down near Bakersfield in southeastern Ozark County. It continued north east skirting the south side of West Plains and continuing into Oregon County causing damage near Rover and Thomasville areas.
As the tornadoes moved north-northeast across the service area, power outage reports rolled in rapidly. Early Saturday morning, the highest number was around 6,300 members without power.
At that time, mutual assistance calls were made and plans began forming for the restoration process to begin. During the seven days of restoration, Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative (HOEC) received assistance from more than 115 additional lineman from Co-Mo, Grundy, Osage Valley, Platte-Clay, North Central, United, West Central and White River Valley Electric Cooperatives, as well as KIOWA and Arkansas Electric contractors.
Three Sho-Me Power substations, from which power for HOEC members is distributed, were directly hit. Sho-Me Power is the transmission cooperative for HOEC. There was damage inside the substations and to high voltage transmission lines as well as to the main feeder lines of HOEC.
More than 400 poles were found that were broken or on the ground and had to be replaced.
Power was restored to all members around 5:30 p.m. Friday, March 21, 2025.
“This was a multi-day outage for most of the members who lost power in the storms on Friday night,” said General Manager Dan Singletary. “What the cooperative built over time, Mother Nature destroyed in seconds. Our thoughts and prayers continue for our communities and neighbors who will be recovering from the storms for much longer than it took us to restore power to our members,” he added.
