As of 4:30 Monday afternoon, in approximately 24 hours Upshur Rural Electric Cooperative has reduced overnight the current outage from over 38,000 meters without power to 22,971 this morning, then to 12,421 presently without power. URECC linemen, contractors, and engineering staff began working on outage repairs late Sunday afternoon immediately following the wind damage. Those crews worked through the night and will continue until dark today. At dark today crews will be sent home for much needed rest until 6am tomorrow morning.

Due to these crews hard work all URECC substations are operating again. The task now is locating all of the downed trees throughout the rural URECC lines, removing trees and making the repairs to restore power. The linemen and other crews are working as quickly and safely as they can and have accomplished restoring power to over 25,000 today. However, there is still much work that lies ahead removing all trees on the lines. Some of those trees being in flooded areas.

URECC PRESS RELEASE TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2020 8AM
Before daybreak this Tuesday morning all URECC crews, 6 contractor crews, and two crews from Bowie Cass Electric Co Op continued work on restorations for the remaining 10,363 meters without power in the URECC service area. The frontline winds that produced multiple tornadoes across the southeast United States, left extensive damage throughout East Texas. Not all, but some of the worst hit areas in our service area were Gilmer, Big Sandy, Holly Lake, Soules Chapel, Nesbitt, Noonday and East Mountain. Thirty poles were broken by crashing trees, and some trees brought power lines down in flooded areas and over creek and river bottoms and flatlands.

Today, a remaining 12 broken poles will be replaced. The first priority of restoration was repairing all transmission lines, so power could be brought back to all substations and sent down the lines into the communities. As of the end of the day yesterday, all transmission lines were repaired and all URECC substations working again. The work now extends down the lines. The trees will continue to be cleared on lines running to the different communities and areas, then work will continue in the neighborhoods. The URECC service area covers 10 counties in East Texas, and crews were dispatched throughout the entire area. Restorations will seem to be more often today, now that all substations are restored. The ESTIMATE for total restoration of ALL URECC members is 48-72 hours. Once again, some communities should see power as early as this morning, but areas with more destruction and challenging repairs in wet areas will take longer. Any time estimates released today WILL BE ESTIMATES. As in a couple of areas yesterday, power was brought up from transmission lines only to have breakers thrown again from damage that had not yet been detected.

Please be aware that as power is restored downed power lines and anything touching downed power lines becomes very dangerous. Please keep your distance from any downed line and assume it is always live. Please keep your families safe as we continue to make repairs to restore power.

A collection of homemade masks have been donated to the ministry. These are not surgical grade, but washable, and in the package pick-up area if they would be helpful to anyone. 

If you would like to receive Big Sandy's critical community announcements and hazardous weather alerts, please visit Big Sandy's Code Red Alert to add your contact info into their emergency database.  

If mandates are lifted, the EMT's Scenario Day is scheduled for Wednesday, May 6. If you're interested in participating, please contact Lt. Kaiser or Michael Luke at EMToffice@alertacademy.com.