Summary: During the straight-line wind storm in early March, ONCOR had 290K customers without electrical power, 743 of which were in Willow Park. Here is information on the recovery from this storm damage and on attention to and prevention of the next storm damage - on ONCOR tools that will help us get informed and stay involved in your City of Willow Park.
Latest Update: Wednesday, 15 March, 2023
Select #Tags for additional articles: #Electricity
ONCOR Electricity, Willow Park storm damage and prevention
During the straight-line wind storm the afternoon of Thursday, 02 March 2023, ONCOR had 290K customers without electrical power, 743 of which were in Willow Park. Thanks to a well-established network of mutual assistance partners, who bring help from other areas, ONCOR put most of the houses back online within 48 hours.
However, in the Kings Gate Road, Yucca Road and Sherwood Street area of Willow Park (32.755157, -97.652585), it took much longer to restore power. In this area, and similar older areas, electric lines are run across above-ground utility poles and through large tree branches, which make the storm damage worse and the resulting recovery more difficult. In addition, replacing and repositioning the utility poles and electricity lines, was hampered further by lines that were not on the street, but lines and poles that run inbetween properties and houses.
During this early March storm, three utility poles were broken in the Kings Gate area and "unfortunately those poles had limited truck access or no truck access and everything had to be done by hand. We had to hand dig the poles, we had to hand carry the poles from the street to the back yards, we had to hand bring in the transformer that fed several residence in that area and that had to be done by hand up to the pole and mounted. We had to restring wire, get it all tied in. [However] we had signifiant tree trimming that had to be done even before we could start any of this restoration." All this tedious work had to be finished to restore power to about eighty six (86) Willow Park customers in that Kings Gate area.
This and other data was reported by ONCOR Area Manager Michael Dimas to the Willow Park during the 14 March 2023 Council Meeting (video time stamp 15:15). Mr Dimas is the Oncor customer service representative for Willow Park and fourteen (14) other cities in our ONCOR service area.
ONCOR is the largest energy provider in Texas, serving more than thirteen (13) million customers.
What can Willow Park do to help prepare, prevent, and recover from storm damage? Mr. Dimas had two suggestions -- be prepared and be vigilant.
First, every household should have a cell phone with the ONCOR app and account AND should sign-up for My ONCOR Alerts for text, email, voice alerts. Then, when an electrical outage occurs, citizens will have immediate access to information about storm damage and electricity restoration. In addition ONCOR offers a Active Outage Map.
Second, Willow Park citizens should use the well-advised and well-established "see something, say something" plan. Mr. Dimas suggested citizens and city employees be on the look-out for leaning or heavily damaged utility poles and sagging or downed power lines and tree and vegetation entangled in power lines, and then report these areas of potential trouble to the Willow Park Public Works Department, who will observe and report to ONCOR.
Willow Park Public Works Department phone (817) 441-7708, website, and website contact form.
City Administration Bryan Grimes even suggested the City establish a program where city employees, working around the city, look for and report potential ONCOR utility pole and line problems.
Get informed and stay involved in your City of Willow Park.
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