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Crews battle cold, ice to restore electricity in Oklahoma
CORDELL — Out of the thick fog and morning darkness, one bucket truck after another emerges on Monday, a stream of light flowing southward on State Highway 183. The convoy of 45 trucks stretches for miles as it ventures into some of the ice storm’s most devastated communities — such as Hobart, Lone Wolf and Roosevelt — to restore electricity.
Kiwash Electric Cooperative veteran lineman Jerry Black worked his first ice storm at age 16 in Texas. PHOTO BY RON JACKSON, THE OKLAHOMAN
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Toppled and snapped power lines greet them in every direction, as does a biting chill that seems to gnaw to the bone. They journey into a region still encased by ice. Roads are smothered under it. Signs are pasted by it. Power lines bow from it; on some blocks it’s thicker than a pop can.
"Look at it all,” said Jerry Black, a technical service supervisor for Kiwash Electric Cooperative Inc. and a veteran lineman of 34 years.
"It’s pitiful.”
Black patrols the region for Kiwash, which oversees a 3,000-mile service area stretching from Taloga on the Canadian River south to Roosevelt in Kiowa County.
Kiwash serves 6,000 customers — an estimated 1,150 of whom were still without power Monday morning. By late afternoon, and despite the non-stop work of 19 crews, that number climbed to an estimated 3,000 as dropping ice snapped lines and toppled poles.
"That’s when it gets real frustrating,” said Black, who inspected every power line as he drove an icy road between Sentinel and Lone Wolf. "You work so hard to get power restored, and then you might have a line snap from melting ice. All of a sudden you have a whole section of people out of power again and you’re back to square one.
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