Sunday storms down trees, cut power

Posted 4/15/20

A strong thunderstorm Sunday evening lashed Wood County and East Texas causing damage from high winds, falling trees and limbs. The storm also knocked out power to much of Wood County, leaving electric companies scrambling to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses. Restorations were still ongoing on Tuesday.

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Sunday storms down trees, cut power

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A strong thunderstorm Sunday evening lashed Wood County and East Texas causing damage from high winds, falling trees and limbs.

The storm also knocked out power to much of Wood County, leaving electric companies scrambling to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses. Restorations were still ongoing on Tuesday.

The Sunday evening storm came as somewhat of a surprise, following on the heels of a line of strong storms that passed through on Easter morning and spread death and destruction across the southeastern United States.

The separate cell formed in the Dallas area in the late afternoon and tracked east, moving at 50 miles an hour and packing winds estimated at 60 miles per hour.

As trees came crashing down and large limbs were felled, electrical lines took heavy damage, putting large swaths of the county in the dark with sunset approaching.

Reports of homes and vehicles damaged by the falling timber were also widespread, as was wind damage.

Fallen trees also blocked roadways as county and state crews, assisted by citizens, scrambled to clear the debris.

In downtown Mineola, the storm damaged several building facades and flipped one traffic light while also scattering construction barricades and barrels marking the improvements along Hwy. 69.

At least two homes on the east side of Mineola took direct hits from large fallen trees on Mimosa and McDonald Streets.

Quitman was reported completely without power, and widespread outages also hit Mineola and surrounding areas. At the height, Wood County Electric Co-op reported more than 17,000 residences without power across nine counties, starting in the Ben Wheeler area and moving east.

In addition to downed lines, the co-op reported broken power poles and a major Southwestern Electric Power Co. transmission line down in the Hawkins area.

Saturated ground from recent rains only aggravated the situation.

According to a co-op news release, “The sheer number of outages, and the fact that there were many single and broadly scattered outages, contributed to the work effort and increased the length of time. To get power on as quickly as possible, WCEC added contractor crews. Additionally, Trinity Valley Electric Cooperative sent mutual aid crews to help. This is a common practice among cooperatives, whose organizations help each other during high-volume outages.”    

SWEPCO reported 22,000 outages in the first line of storms and 64,000 in all after the second wave throughout its service area in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

SWEPCO also brought in contractors and crews from sister companies.

“In such a rural area with numerous trees, even with an aggressive right-of-way program like we have at WCEC, these events tend to wreak havoc on our system, said Trey Teaff, Wood County co-op CEO/general manager.

Suddenlink also reported numerous phone and Internet outages.