More than 48 hours after a severe storm blew through North Texas, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers, crews still pushed to cut through downed trees and fix electrical lines and equipment as strong thunderstorms moved through the area again.
Nearly 150,000 customers were still without power late Thursday evening, according to Oncor, the largest provider of electricity in North Texas. That was down from Wednesday when more than 230,000 customers were without power. Oncor said then that it could take until late Friday or Saturday to fully restore power.
The ongoing storms and thunder may result in some “starting and stopping” for crews working to repair downed lines, but Oncor is committed to getting power back to customers by its original timeline, said Grant Cruise, a spokesperson for Oncor. The majority of customers should see power return by Friday evening.
“The lower the number [of outages] gets, sometimes the harder it is to work because access to some of this equipment has been an issue with all of the fallen trees and debris, so that’s what we’re trying to work through now,” Cruise said.
Crews were brought in from neighboring states and as far away as Virginia, South Carolina and Florida to help clear the way to disrupted power lines, Cruise said, adding that a lot of that aid was to help with removing trees and debris.
Some Dallas residents have said this week’s outages have felt comparable, if not worse than, the 2021 freeze.
Cruise said it’s hard to compare the two events because they are “completely different scenarios.” He said the 2021 freeze was a power generation issue and supply crisis whereas this week’s massive storm moved through a large swath of Oncor’s service territory and caused downed vegetation that damaged or impacted equipment.
Why is my power out again?
Despite progress, there appeared to be some setbacks as well. Some residents in the Lakewood and Hollywood-Santa Monica areas of Dallas who had power restored Wednesday woke up to another outage Thursday morning.
Cruise said there could be a number of reasons customers experience another outage after having power restored. Sometimes lines that have been energized need to be turned off to make it safe for first responders to reach certain areas, and sometimes lines are damaged again by newly fallen trees due to rain-softened ground.
“In those situations, we could have damage to equipment we just fixed so have to go back and redo those repairs or redo those rebuilds,” he said.
Oncor has its own vegetation management crews that remove trees off the agency’s powerlines and infrastructure. Typically, Cruise said, crews try to move the debris and put it through a chipper, however with the severity of the recent storms, crews may only be moving the debris to a place where it’s not a hazard and will have to return later to dispose of it.
“Access to our equipment has been a big issue with the storm,” Cruise said. “The No. 1 priority is to create a clear path for restoration crews and the public rather than worry about the aesthetic piece.”
At its peak, Oncor outages caused by Tuesday’s nearly 80 mph winds, golf ball-sized hail and rain topped 650,000, meaning crews restored power for more than 340,000 in under 24 hours.
Many Dallas homes without power, neighborhoods beset by downed trees
More than 66,500 Dallas homes and businesses remained without power late Thursday afternoon, according to Travis Houston, the city’s Office of Emergency Management director.
Houston said Thursday that the city is coordinating with Dallas County on whether to issue an individual disaster declaration for Dallas to help bring in more resources to aid in the recovery effort.
Some city libraries and recreation centers either remained without power or had power intermittently on Thursday, Houston said. Some city fire stations were operating on backup power, he added. A little less than 100 traffic signals were still out as of Thursday morning and another 127 were flashing.
Houston said more than 300 city employees were part of crews clearing fallen trees and other debris from major roadways and neighborhood streets. Heavy rains on Thursday slowed progress in some areas.
”We’re watching the weather really closely and if we have impacts from any more severe weather, it could set things back to some degree,” Houston said.
City officials said Wednesday that it could be at least a month before storm debris is fully cleared from the city.
He said Dallas’ 311 nonemergency line has received more than 5,000 requests for service between midnight Tuesday to around 1:40 p.m. Thursday, city data shows.
Downed trees and low hanging limbs made up most complaints, more than 1,180. Around 65% of the requests came the day of the storm.
Requests about fallen trees came in from most areas around the city, but the data shows five city districts had more than 100 calls each: District 2, which runs from the Love Field area through parts of downtown, Deep Ellum and the Cedars, to East Dallas; District 9, which covers East Dallas including the White Rock Lake area; District 10 in northeast Dallas including the Lake Highlands area; District 12 in Far North Dallas; and District 13, which covers parts of northwest and north central Dallas areas like Vickery Meadow and Preston Hollow.
“It’s part of the beauty and the curse of some of our areas,” said Dallas City Council member Zarin Gracey, who represents District 3 in southwest Dallas. “We have all these trees that add to the character of neighborhoods and other benefits, but then you have weather events like this and you pay for it.”
Cara Mendelsohn, who represents District 12, said along with toppled trees, the lack of electricity is still the top concern residents have.
“I have a lot of people without power and they are not happy about it,” she said.
The city said Wednesday it could take a month to clear fallen trees and debris from alleys and curbs.
The city of Irving said in an email that collecting storm debris will take several weeks. It said Solid Waste Services is working overtime but regular collection days may be delayed due to the volume of debris across the city.
Irving also opened cooling centers at city recreation centers and libraries.
In its news release, the city of Garland said that based on preliminary filings to the Individual State of Texas Assessment Tool (iSTAT) damage survey, Garland was the city hit hardest by the storm. Within 36 hours, over 700 damage reports for Garland public and private properties had been filed, including 48 citing major damage.
Texans can still make reports at damage.tdem.texas.gov.
Staff writers Sofia Barnett and Jamie Landers contributed to this report.
