Storms leave thousands without power

Nearly 80,000 customers of electric utilities lost power when powerful Sunday night storms raked the state from the northwest to the southeast. Some homes were destroyed by the winds and there were four unconfirmed possible tornadoes.

By 7:30 Monday morning, Oklahoma Gas and Electric had reduced the number of outages, and 43,000 customers were listed without power. The utility said the hardest hit areas included the northern part of Oklahoma City where numerous power poles, light poles and power lines were brought down by winds estimated close to 90 miles an hour.

By late afternoon, the utility gave another update on power restoration.

Power Restoration Underway 

• Following Sunday night’s severe storms, 76% of customers who lost power have been restored. Crews will continue to work around the clock to restore power to the remaining 16,400 customers without service.
• A team of 1,400 restoration and support personnel is responding to the storm impact. OG&E brought in approximately 520 line workers, vegetation crews, and damage assessors from other communities and states, including PSO.

Severe Storms Caused Significant Damage

• Winds up to 100 mph moved through much of OG&E’s service area overnight. The storms caused downed power lines, broken power poles, and damage to cross arms and other equipment attached to poles.  Nearly 100 power poles, 28 transformers, and 23,000 feet of wire have been deployed to crews for restoration.

The hardest hit areas of the OKC metro were in The Village, Nichols Hills, Del City and Midwest City. OG&E crews began immediate power restoration and expected additional help Monday.

Tulsa-based Public Service Company of Oklahoma reported about 900 customers lost power in the overnight.

The Oklahoma Rural Electric Cooperative reported its members outages totaling more than 8,700 customers.

Canadian Valley Electric Cooperative, Inc.

Updated Jun 22, 10:47am

2,973 member-consumers without power.

• Hughes (OK): 100
• Lincoln (OK): 107
• McIntosh (OK): 87
• Okfuskee (OK): 43
• Oklahoma (OK): 3
• Pottawatomie (OK): 2,000
• Seminole (OK): 619

Cleveland (OK): 14CKenergy Electric Cooperative

Updated Jun 22, 10:43am1,764 member-consumers without power.

• Blaine (OK): 2
• Caddo (OK): 1,106
• Canadian (OK): 371
• Comanche (OK): 114
• Custer (OK): 16
• Kiowa (OK): 1
• Washita (OK): 143
• Dewey (OK): 11

Northwestern Electric Cooperative, Inc.

• • Updated Jun 22, 10:45am1,283 member-consumers without power.
    • Beaver (OK): 1
    • Dewey (OK): 157
    • Ellis (OK): 7
    • Harper (OK): 543
    • Major (OK): 95
    • Woods (OK): 1
    • Woodward (OK): 479

Winds were so powerful they toppled an estimated 180 rail cars in Woodward County where Kelly Witchey is the Emergency Manager.

“As far as the train derailment, they have all of their recovery units and contractors coming in to take care of the train. The last number I had was 180 intermodal cars had been derailed. Those intermodal cars have the Connex boxes on them, so they were stacked two high. We’re probably looking at about 250 tractor-trailer-sized containers. Only two had any hazmat potential in them,” Witchey told NEWS 9 TV news.

“That placard number is 3166, which is kind of a miscellaneous hazards classification. It indicates gas combustion engines and that kind of thing. So, it could be weed eaters and lawn mowers — not cars — but it’s kind of iffy as to exactly what they had. There were no breaches in any of the Connex containers, which is good.”