By Brian Besch
Many in East Texas are in need of supplies and options are slim on providers. A day after Hurricane Beryl barreled through this portion of the state, fuel, food and other necessities are in high demand.
A select few businesses have power, and those that do are experiencing long lines. Employees standing outside of Walmart in Livingston relayed rumors of opening as early as 2 p.m. Tuesday and as late as Thursday.
Gas stations are also a rarity, but two businesses had fuel pumps open in Goodrich, and the wait was substantial, beginning hundreds of feet down Highway 59.
Sam Houston Electric Cooperative (SHECO) provides power to 10 counties, including Polk, San Jacinto, Tyler and Trinity. The 91,000 service locations that rely on SHECO for electricity mostly all have one obvious question. However, when the electricity will return is not a simple answer.
A total of 81,000 customers lost power from the impact of Beryl. That number was down to 70,000 as of Tuesday morning.
Those fortunate enough to not lose electricity depends a lot on their proximity to a substation. Sam Houston Electric Cooperative Chief Communications Officer Rachel Frey said parts of Tyler and Angelina County suffered less damage, which could also be a factor.
"It is incredible what our members went through. There are countless trees down, and most of them are green (not dead) trees," Frey explained. "We have a very robust right-of-way program and we can cut trees to clear on 10 feet of either side of the power lines. I believe we have cut 12,000 dead trees since January.
"We've got — from when the storm came on until (Tuesday) morning — around 10,000 customers (back on), but during that time, it took multiple attempts to get each one of those meters on. They would go down the line and find another problem and then another problem. There is a lot of work that our crews are going through. We have 400 contractors right now and we anticipate another several hundred coming throughout (Tuesday and Wednesday). We are going to get more as they are released from other utilities."
Frey said contractors are traveling to East Texas from all over, including Oklahoma, Louisiana and different regions of Texas. Replacing poles and lines will be a lengthy task, but customer feedback can assist in the troubleshooting.
"On something like this, there is probably multiple different issues. They will start and work their way out. There is also a safety concern, because we have crews working on top of each other, and if they are not communicating clearly, that can lead to some scary situations."
Frey also stressed generator safety for homes or businesses temporarily supplying their own power. She said if generators are hooked up improperly, they can backfeed onto the grid and increase voltage when reaching transformers, causing injury.
So, how about that timeframe for electricity?
"There is no way to say at this moment, because there could be the potential for different areas," Frey said. "Right now, seven of our substations do not have any transmission, and we have to work with Entergy on that. We don't have a lot of information on the estimated time we will have everyone back up."
SHECO has received thousands of phone calls since the outages that have caused extended wait times. They are typically aware of outages, yet still encourage customers to call for more information. There are also online tools, including an app to assist in reporting outages or obtaining information on power usage and status of bills. The mySamHouston app is available in the Google Play Store, and SHECO may be reached by calling 936-327-5711 in Livingston, 936-653-5400 in Coldspring, 409-283-8251 in Woodville, or long distance at 888-444-1207.
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