Southwestern Electric Gets Last of Outages Corrected

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Published on February 26 2016 11:02 am
Last Updated on February 26 2016 11:03 am
Written by Greg Sapp

Southwestern Electric crews have restored power to all members in the cooperative’s service area. Linemen restored the final outage Thursday at 9 p.m.

 “Operations personnel and line crews will be examining our distribution system in the coming week,” said Joe Richardson, the cooperative’s communications coordinator. “They’ll survey the areas that sustained the heaviest damage to check repairs and verify line integrity.”

Wednesday’s winter storm interrupted service to more than 7,000 members in 10 counties served by Southwestern Electric. Ice and high winds brought down power lines and broke utility poles. Sustained, driving winds punctuated by 40-mph gusts created additional outages throughout the day and hampered the cooperative’s early repair efforts.

Southwestern called contract crews to expedite repairs, and personnel worked through the night to restore power as quickly as possible, Richardson said.

“Given the magnitude of the storm, our system held up well,” he said. “We appreciate the patience our members have shown over the last two days, and the encouragement they’ve offered the crews who worked around the clock to restore power.”