Crews From Far And Wide Converge On North Texas After Wind Damage Caused Tens Of Thousands To Lose Power

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Crews from West Texas and out of state made their way to North Texas Thursday night, Oct. 28 to assist Oncor Electric in restoring power.

Tens of thousands of power outages have made for a very busy day.

When Nahira Gomez started seeing the wind pick up this morning, she got worried.

"The main thing I thought about was the trees just breaking off and damaging my car," she said.

Then her North Dallas apartment lost power and her mind immediately went back to last February.

"I have flashbacks about the winter storm storm and I'm Puerto Rican so when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as well so without power we cannot make anything at home," she said.

"The whole street, nobody has power so I'm pretty sure everybody's frustrated right now," her neighbor said.

"We're working as quickly and safely as we can to get the power back on, but it is start and stop work," Oncor Spokesperson Grant Cruise said.

When winds pick up, Oncor crews are occasionally having to take a break when the situation becomes unsafe. And in some cases - they're also dealing with flying debris.

"A couple of days ago we had significant rainfall for our area and so the ground is softened," Cruise said.

"Even if the wind isn't completely pushing a tree over it might push it just far enough so that it comes in contact with our equipment."

He said repair times will vary depending on the severity of the issue.

"If a tree falls and pulls down a line, that can be a fairly quick repair," he said. "If a tree falls on a pole and knocks it over and crushes a transformer, that's a more significant repair"

When the wind dies down, crews will really be able to work a lot faster.

POWER OUTAGES AS OF 9:40 P.M. THURSDAY

Collin County       1,416

Dallas County      13,031

Denton County    694

Tarrant County    8,898