LAWTON — More than 11,225 Public Service Co. customers lost power in the severe thunderstorms that raked Oklahoma Sunday night and early Monday, but service was restored to all but 197 of them by 1:30 p.m. Monday, Regional Communications Manager Wayne Greene said.
“The remaining outages are concentrated in southwestern Oklahoma, where 76 customers were still without power” Monday afternoon, he said.
That area included Lawton, Duncan and Hobart – where winds were clocked at 111 mph – but “the biggest tranche was in Elk City,” Greene said.
Damage assessments included 92 downed poles in PSO’s distribution system, mostly in the southwest sector of the state. Damaged transmission towers, wires and other equipment was also reported, Greene said.
PSO had more than 1,200 line workers, forestry personnel and support staff “ready to respond throughout its service area,” and more than 100 off-system personnel were called in from other parts of Oklahoma and Texas, he said.
Damage from strong winds was reported in Cheyenne, where Congressman Frank Lucas lives. A spokesman said he didn’t know whether Lucas’s property was damaged in the storm, but told Southwest Ledger during a telephone call shortly before 1 p.m. Monday that the congressman, who is in Washington, D.C., “has been on the phone with his wife.”
PSO, a Tulsa-based subsidiary of American Electric Power, is an electric utility company serving more than 568,000 customer accounts in 232 communities in eastern and southwestern Oklahoma.