NORTH TEXAS (WBAP/KLIF News) – More than 100,000 people were without power Wednesday morning after a series of thunderstorms tore through the Metroplex.
At it the outages’ peak, more than 200,000 customers were offline.
Multiple counties including Dallas, Collin and Rockwall are reporting damage to homes and cars, downed trees and power lines.
Oncor’s Geoff Bailey said crews are working as quickly and as diligently as possible but massive amounts of debris always hamper the process.
“Downed power lines, downed poles as well as lightning strikes on equipment that will need to be replaced,” he said.
There are significant outages in North Dallas and there is a systematic process to getting power restored.
“We look at restoring to restoring power to first responders…policemen… firefighters. Then we look at restoring power to critical infrastructure…hospitals, gas stations, etc. Then we look at restoring power to the largest numbers of residents at one time,” he said.
He said Oncor has not called in additional resources to help restore the power but the company has not ruled that out.
“With any outage, regardless if it’s a small amount of customers or a large amount of customers we will have crews around the clock working to restore power as quickly and as safely as possible,” said Bailey.
Many North Texas home and business owners will be cleaning up the damage and Bailey said he wants them to be safe. He said if anyone sees a downed power line, they should assume its live and call 911.
“We work with a number of first responders and agencies at the city, the county and at the state level to help clear roadways thoroughfares and obviously vegetation and downed infrastructure,” he said.
Bailey said the company does not have an estimated time as to when the power will fully be restored.
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