CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — As many as 7,300 AEP Texas customers in the Corpus Christi area were without power Monday morning, according to the company.
Omar Lopez, the manager of corporate communications for AEP Texas said two separate factors caused separate clusters of outages in Corpus Christi: high winds and lightning strikes.
“I think we had a double whammy, with the lightning and the strong winds today, but it certainly was a lesson to all of us that this is coming,” Lopez said. “We saw lightning really hit some of our electrical facilities, it caused two pole fires in Corpus Christi. Things like that are inevitable, we’re going to see high winds again, but like today, we’re ready to respond.”
One of those customers who dealt with no power Monday morning was Flour Bluff resident Sandra Parker.
She said her house lost power around 7 a.m.
“The power went out right after (my husband)a made the coffee this morning, and when I woke up, the coffee was already cooling,” she said.
Parker said she was unable to do much, because her home is entirely electric.
“I can’t do the dishes unless I wash them by hand. But the problem with that is I have a hot water heater that’s also all-electric,” she said.
Parker said she was also unable to use her stove, her and her husband kept from opening the refrigerator and freezer as much as possible, and she spent most of her morning playing solitaire on her phone.
Lopez said crews were out working on restoring power to residents through the night Sunday into Monday.
“They worked through the night, because we did have some outages associated with some strong winds over the weekend,” he said.
Parker said by 12:30 p.m., power was back in her home.
As of 5 p.m., only about 500 customers were without power.
“The weather can be very unpredictable, so that’s why we stay ready. I’m very happy to report, while we did experience a prolonged outage for a lot of the city, our crews were ready, and the trucks were rolling,” Lopez said.
As we head through spring and towards hurricane season, Lopez said we can expect more outages from storms in the area.
“Storms like this, we know it’s spring time, they’re coming. We are prepared, but nonetheless, outages can be an inconvenience, so we appreciate everybody’s patience,” he said.
Lopez also said if there are downed power lines, they should be treated as live wires.
Power outage updates can be viewed on the AEP Texas outage map, along with estimated power restoration times.
