Kansas City on ice January 29 marked the arrival of an historic
ice storm that devastated large portions of the Midwest. One of
the hardest hit locales was the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Officials called it the worst natural disaster in local history.
The results were as instructive as they were devastating. The
storm began on January 29 and lasted through the 31 Though the
thought of ice storms may evoke mental images of branches and
whole trees crashing violently through lines (in fact, that does
happen), the reality in most cases is somewhat different, though
sometimes no less spectacular. As ice accumulates, tree branches
sag, drooping onto power lines. According to Jerry Borland,
executive editor of Transmission and Distribution World
magazine, this is what causes most outages in ice storms. The
branches cause a short, or fault, when they touch the lines. If
no protective measures were in place, the arcs generated by the
electrical current would eventually melt the line, causing it to
break. To preve