Power outages persist in Oklahoma and Louisiana after weekend storms

Thousands of residents in Oklahoma and Louisiana remained without electricity Wednesday as work crews continued to repair power lines damaged by weekend storms. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, less than 92,000 customers remained without power after three tornadoes northeast of the city caused extensive damage Sunday, including downed trees and hundreds of snapped utility poles.
The three tornadoes were each rated EF1 with winds between 86 miles per hour (138 kilometers per hour) and 110 miles per hour (177 kilometers per hour), National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Sellers said Wednesday.
“There was a lot of wind damage, but most of the damage was straight line winds,” Sellers said.
Thunderstorms that moved through the Tulsa area on Wednesday slowed down repair crews, Wayne Greene, a spokesperson for Public Service Company of Oklahoma, the state’s second largest electric utility provider, said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
“Our numbers actually bumped up a little bit,” Greene said. “But we’re making good progress again.”
At the height of the power outage on Sunday, more than 200,000 customers were without power. Officials expected the prolonged outages in the Tulsa area to possibly last into the weekend for some residents. City officials have set up cooling centers for residents. Tulsa was under a heat advisory Wednesday as hot temperatures and high humidity created dangerous conditions for several hours. Another heat advisory was set for Thursday. A heat wave has kept large swaths of the southern U.S. in triple-digit temperatures for the past week. “Everybody is going to get through this together as long as we remain neighborly and help one another,” said Joe Kralicek, director of the Tulsa Area Emergency Management Agency.
In northwest Louisiana, huge uprooted and toppled trees still littered parts of the landscape five days after high straight-line winds and a tornado tore through the area early Friday. The storm had knocked out power for more than 250,000 people in the area. Electricity was restored to all but about 32,000 by Wednesday afternoon. Most were in the Shreveport and Caddo Parish area, and most were customers of Southwestern Electric Power Company, which provides much of the power in that part of the state. About 3,000 workers from multiple states were part of the repair effort. Cooling centers for people without power or air conditioning remained open in and around Shreveport with Wednesday temperatures in the mid-90s (35 degrees Celsius) and heat indices as high as 114 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius).