Weathering the Storm

The May 6 North Texas storm first made waves in Erath County, traveling in a west-to-east pattern across United’s service territory.

The National Weather Service of Fort Worth reported that the storm event featured large hail, wind gusts up to 70 mph and powerful lightning strikes. With these conditions combined, it resulted in a vigorous restoration project in store for United line crews.

“United line crews truly rose to the occasion in this severe weather event despite the discouraging conditions or number of outages,” said United CEO Cameron Smallwood. “Everyone at United strives to respond as quickly and as safely as possible in any restoration event. The May 6 storm was just another example of how much we care to serve our members.”

After the storm left the Stephenville area in mild disarray, it began to pose a larger threat to Johnson County as it moved into the more highly populated and meter-dense area.

“At first, the storm-related outage calls were incredibly widespread,” said Senior Foreman Jerry Scott. “Our Stephenville and Granbury crews were able to respond to their territory rather quickly. However, the storm heavily impacted Johnson County. United had the most restoration volume in this area due to snapping tree limbs and population density.”

As the night of May 6 progressed into the early hours of May 7, outages peaked at more than 10,000 United meter locations impacted.

“We needed all hands-on deck due to the number of outages and weather conditions,” Scott said. “Between United line crews and our third-party contractors that included vegetation management and contracted line crews, we had over 80 people working together in the field that night.”

Intervention with downed lines and tree limbs, broken poles and damaged transformers were consistent challenges for the operations team, Scott said. When those elements need to be restored, there is far more physical work that needs to be completed in comparison to routine storm outages.

Although the number of outages began to dwindle, the challenge of designating breaks arose after numerous linemen were nearing the end of their 16-hour work shifts.

“We want to practice safety in all ways, and that includes letting our linemen rest when they surpass a certain amount of working hours,” Scott said. “Our crews truly hate to stop working because we’re all so motivated to get the power back on for our members. However, at some point, we have to tell our crews that they need to rest to do their job efficiently.”

One long night turned into a 24-hour project of restoring power. United crews worked tirelessly to take the 10,000 members experiencing power outages to fewer than 100 within a day. Although the bulk of United’s members had their lights back on, a handful still needed to be restored with internet outages at the forefront. May 8 officially wrapped up the restoration project within a two-day time frame.

“It’s been over a decade since I’ve seen a storm like that one,” Scott said. “The best way to stay informed and safe when major weather events such as this one occurs is to refer to our social media platforms, report an outage if needed and watch the outage map on the United website to know how we are responding.”