Most of the outages to Sam Houston Electric Co-op (SHECO) members caused by Hurricane Beryl Monday have been restored over the past few days. A massive effort to return all to full power included over 1,000 contractors brought in from surrounding states and regions, around 20 times the typical SHECO workforce.
The co-op serves 91,500 meters, and at the peak of the storm, approximately 81,500 of those were out. There are still 18,800 to go as of Friday morning, meaning more than 75% of those out are back in service.
“We know that many people still need power and our crews and contractors are still working diligently to get the lights on for everyone,” SHECO Chief Communications Officer Rachel Frey said. “We’re incredibly grateful for them. We are ensuring that they are fed with a packed lunch for the day. Safety is incredibly important. We appreciate all our members trying to help, but distractions can be a dangerous thing in our line of business. We are encouraging people – as much as they are excited to see our crews – to not approach our crews in the field. They have to keep their whole focus, even if it looks like someone is standing back. We appreciate the hospitality and warmth of our members, but we would also appreciate if they would just give a wave and allow them to continue to work.”
Frey said all workers are generally putting in 16-hour days to get as much done as possible. The intensity of Beryl is what has made the job difficult.
“Meteorologists say that the northeast quadrant of the hurricane is the strongest,” she said. “That is what went through our entire area. There were also reports of tornadoes outside of our area, like in Jasper, where there was a confirmed one. There were strong storms throughout our area that caused a lot of broken poles, which takes a good amount of time to replace safely. There were a lot of trees on lines or trees wrapped up in lines. Trees and downed lines and downed poles can behave unexpectedly. That is another safety message, because we don’t encourage any member to work on anything themselves. If there are any trees with power lines near it, please stay away. Our crews are working and getting through the system.
“Every area has its unique challenges whether it is access to the area or the intensity of the damage. We have remote communities through East Texas, where there is potential for trees to fall on long lines. We’ve had several anecdotes where crews are walking a long line and they get to the end of it to turn it on and it does not. They walk it out again, and just in that short span of time, another tree has fallen that they couldn’t see. There are still trees falling and new damage.”
Typically, power will return to those near substations first and work out from the main line. That is to restore the flow of electricity from the substation, where Frey said it branches like tree roots.
There is a full list of estimated times for power to return on the Sam Houston Electric website, listed by community. Not every community is listed, and outages can linger beyond the list of times, but there are estimations for nearly 90% of members. Frey reminds that additional outages can return if there is new damage. There’s also an outage map to show overall progress, where outages can be tracked by county or zip code.
“There are an incredible amount of people who have come from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and beyond working diligently to get every single person’s electricity back on. That is our goal, for them to complete it safely. They are working so hard, so we are really appreciative of the crews that have come down to assist us.”
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