A Dallas City Council member wants Oncor to explain why it took close to a week to restore power to some areas of the city after a recent severe storm hit North Texas.
In a memo this week to the state’s largest energy delivery company, council member Paula Blackmon asked for Oncor to review the May 28 storm’s impact and its response, specifically in East Dallas, which includes her district. She also asked Oncor to improve its communication with residents and the city, hold a community meeting to present the results of the company’s review, and address any systemic issues that are found.
Blackmon said one problem in Oncor’s response was that the utility wouldn’t share specific power outage locations in Dallas with the city, citing privacy concerns. She said the lack of information delayed the city’s own response in areas hit the hardest by the storm. Residents also reported problems getting accurate information from Oncor on the status of outages and restoration timelines, she said.
“I’m not looking to rake them over the coals,” Blackmon told The Dallas Morning News on Thursday. “What I’m looking for is creating a better plan of action between the city and Oncor because we’re only going to see more violent storms, more cold snaps, more heat waves, and we need to be prepared.”
Outages resulting from the May 28 storm lasted into Monday. At the peak, over 650,000 homes and businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were in the dark.
Connie Piloto, an Oncor spokeswoman, told The News the company typically does a comprehensive review after any major storm. Oncor representatives are scheduled to meet with several council members to give a post-storm briefing and respond to questions they have, she said. The company had trouble with its notification system and worked to correct it and understood “this caused some confusion for our customers at an already stressful time,” she said.
Piloto called the event the “second-worst storm in our 112-year company history” from an outage perspective and the most damaging storm to hit Dallas County from the company’s perspective. She said she didn’t have any damage cost estimates Thursday.
Piloto said several waves of storms after May 28 caused further outages, damage and flooding, delaying restoration. She said some of the hardest hit areas in Dallas County were in North Dallas, East Dallas and Mesquite, and that Oncor had as many as 12,000 people working to restore power in the region.
“In many of these communities, the outages were among the most complex and time-consuming and required the reconstruction of distribution equipment and replacement of utility poles and transformers,” Piloto said. “Throughout the storm, we communicated with city staff and council members and provided updates as they were available. We recognize that any outage is a hardship, especially when it extends over several days.”
Piloto said though power was restored Monday for the last batch of Dallas County customers affected by the May 28 storm, some customers still need repairs from an electrician and a city inspection before power is reconnected. She said she didn’t immediately know how many of the over 1 million customers Oncor serves in Dallas County were in that situation.
Blackmon said the meeting between Oncor and city officials will happen this month. She said a community meeting hadn’t been scheduled.
Blackmon said she hopes sharing more data will improve both the city’s and Oncor’s responses during natural disasters and help solve recurring problems reported by residents.
“There are neighborhoods that for years have said they are the first ones without power and the last ones to get it back,” Blackmon said. “It’s time to finally figure out if that is the case, and if so, why, where and how do we fix it.”
