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Tulsa, OK, Dec. 12, 2007 -- A winter storm system entered northeastern Oklahoma in the early morning hours of Sunday, December 9, bringing freezing rain that caused significant ice accumulations on trees and overhead power lines. The icing caused numerous electric service disruptions for Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) customers across the greater Tulsa metropolitan area, and across northeastern Oklahoma. PSO estimated that by the afternoon of December 12, 189,199 customers were still without power.
On Monday, December 10, the freezing rain and icing also affected PSO´s service areas in southwestern and southeastern Oklahoma.
PSO is bringing in many additional resources from other electric utilities and utility contractors from a variety of surrounding states to assist PSO crews with the power restoration effort.
Steady freezing rain overnight on December 9 & 10 caused significant amounts of additional ice accumulation on trees and power lines, resulting in massive, widespread power outages across the Tulsa metro area, and in many communities in northeastern Oklahoma. Due to the massive damage to PSO´s electric system, PSO is projecting it will take approximately 7 to 10 days to complete restoring power to all customers who can take power.
The projected time for completing restoration of power is subject to change, depending on the occurrence of additional accumulations of icing and the additional damage to PSO´s electric system that might result.
Even after the winter storm system leaves northeastern Oklahoma, additional outages can be expected to occur anywhere over the next several days as trees and limbs that have been weakened by the ice break and fall onto PSO´s equipment.
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