As Tropical Storm Edouard made its way through East Texas, Sam Houston Electric Cooperative (SHECO) worked to keep electricity flowing to its members.
The storm dropped rainfall that exceeded 20 inches in some areas with wind gusts of up to 90 miles per hour. Polk, Tyler and Hardin County all declared flash flood emergencies.
As of Sept. 3, SHECO had worked to limit power outages to just 13 locations in Polk County. At the time of the most outages, there were over 20,000 of the 96,000 locations they serve. That number had been considerably reduced to 217 by the afternoon of Sept. 3.
“At 10 a.m. (Sept. 2), we were still getting new outages in Polk County since we were having that awful storm,” SHECO Chief Communications Officer Rachel Hawkins said. “The tail end of the storm was dumping a lot of water, but as of 10 a.m., we served 26,362 locations in Polk County, and 7,826 (others) were out at that time.”
Hawkins said downed trees, wind and flooding were all contributing factors to the problem.
“Restoring power is very complicated,” she said. “There’s been multiple issues, typically, getting to each location. It’s not just one tree that’s down, there may be multiple trees and flooding or access issues. With the inundation, we also, in some areas, have had to bring in track equipment.”
Track equipment is specialized machinery with tracks, instead of standard wheels, used to get into difficult places.
Contractors and crews from other cooperatives were also a large help, usually from the East Texas and Houston region.
“We also have mutual aid from crews across the state – Jasper Newton Electric Cooperative, Mid-South Electric Cooperative, which is headquartered in Navasota, HILCO Electric Cooperative, which is in Itasca, Texas, Navasota Valley Electric Cooperative and Wharton County Electric Cooperative. We had some contract crews and we had a little over 400 people working on the system.”
