400 Customers Still Without Power, Crews Work to Repair Electrical Damage

After high winds and two tornadoes struck the city Wednesday night, citizens across San Angelo lost power. ASU canceled classes, street lights went black and businesses were shuttered after the storm, as city crews, private contractors and citizens worked to clean up and repair the damage.

AEP Manager of Community Affairs Fred Hernandez estimates that roughly 21,000 customers went black beginning at around 8:00 p.m., however by Wednesday morning at 5:00, 95 percent of those had been restored. Currently, there are still about 400 AEP customers without electricity in San Angelo, but Hernandez says he hopes his crews will have those up by the end of Friday.

The damage, Hernandez said, included a little bit of everything. “High winds caused some of our poles to bow, sometimes it was stuff flying through the air, sometimes the transformers fell to the ground,” he said.

Local crews worked 20 straight hours Wednesday night to restore power within the city, and private contractors have been called into to help restring cables, replace transistors and repair other damage, Hernandez said. He estimated a total of 250 people are currently working on repairs citywide.

“Most of the damage was in the north and east portions of San Angelo,” he said, “[including] the Grape creek area, the Paul Ann subdivision, then it moved out into the country, got Veribest, Wall, Eola…”

Hernandez said his crews have experienced a relatively incident-free restoration, and that most customers have been helpful in pointing out the damage and being patient for repairs. He did say, however that he urges citizens to make contingency plans for extreme weather and consider things like how to keep medications cool that need to be refrigerated and having flashlights and other aids ready.

On San Angelo LIVE’s Facebook page, several readers mentioned having troubles due to the lack of power, ranging from comments pertaining to lack of air conditioning to those in need of electricity to run breathing machines.

In order to provide assistance to those affected by the outages, the local chapter of the American Red Cross put a shelter team on standby Wednesday night, however they have not had to erect a stand-alone shelter due to the storm.

“We’ve had a few clients that have called in requesting services,” said interim Executive Director Josh McDonald Thursday. “It’s just kind of been when they call in, they call in. A lot of the damage was mostly shingles. We have people who have lost their roofs, trees go through the house, those are the people who tend to call us.”

McDonald said he has a captain on call and five volunteers assisting the four families that have contacted the Red Cross, and they have been provided with services, food, shelter and clothing.

“A lot of the houses that were affected are up in the Grape Creek area and the people are just kind of picking up and going onward,” McDonald said. “If they’ve got damage to their home and they can’t live in it, we encourage them to call the Red Cross and we’ll see what we can do to help them out.”

For more information on the Red Cross, click here.