Rural Missouri magazine honored Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative, West Plains, as the electric cooperative with the best storm response during a presentation of the magazine's 2025 High Voltage Awards on Oct. 16.
The awards recognize the best member communications taking place at Missouri's electric cooperatives. "Communication is at the heart of the cooperative difference," said Rural Missouri Editor Sara Schafer. "Missouri's electric cooperatives continue to find creative, effective ways to connect with members — from print and digital storytelling to social media outreach. It's inspiring to see how they're using every tool available to keep members informed and engaged."
Judges had this to say about Howell-Oregon's efforts: "Previously untested in a major storm situation, Howell-Oregon's communications specialist Stephanie Beltz-Price was thrown into the fray when not one, but three tornadoes hit the co-op's lines in March, causing extensive damage. She rallied the troops behind her and gave frequent progress reports on what was being done. As the outage drug on, Stephanie shot daily videos of GM Dan Singletary reporting on progress and posted these to Facebook. These messages were honest, forthright and were some of the best updates we've ever seen. In between she posted photos of the work in progress and praised the mutual aid workers from other co-ops who helped get the lines back up. In the days that followed there were frequent storm warnings that prepared members for outages caused by a severe spring in the Ozarks."
"We have had storms before, but this was the largest in my 40-year career," explained Singletary. "All of our crews and team members did an exceptional job. From the warehouse crews who worked early mornings getting the materials ready, to the line crews out working the field. We also made the call for mutual aid and they responded with additional crews the morning after the tornadoes.
"Communication is a vital part for everyone at the cooperative and this outage proved that more than ever," explained Singletary. "We needed to let members know this was going to be a multiday outage, but we also wanted them to know we were working on it and the best way to do that was to show them. When we learned about more damage, we communicated that to our members, through Facebook, our website, videos, pictures and media releases. We also created daily info sheets for those taking calls to be able to provide info to members calling. It was a full-on effort from everyone."
Rural Missouri is the statewide member magazine produced by the Missouri Electric Cooperatives. Each month is mails to nearly 600,000 cooperative members across the state.
