An ‘F’ to Southwest Power Pool

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With last week’s major snowstorm that crippled almost all of Oklahoma, including the local area, there were lots of yeas of how public services responded to it.

There also were some nays.

Among the yeas were the responses from crews and officials with various area cities and towns, the counties in the area, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and first responders ranging from paramedics to police and county law enforcement and state troopers.

There’s lots of good things people can say about all of those.

Of course, there may be some complaints about them. By and large, though, they did an outstanding job.

So did local utilities as they coped with unprecedented snow and historic record-setting temperatures and wind chills.

But Southwest Power Pool was less than impressive with how it handled this historic snowstorm and record cold. They could have done a much better job of handling the rolling blackouts – a euphemism for cutting off customers’ electricity - especially for people in the rural areas and who are the most vulnerable, such as those who depend on lifesustaining medical equipment that runs on electricity.

They just did it the wrong way. Just cutting people’s power off with little or no notice isn’t right.

The rolling blackouts, in some cases, including in this area, were already being implemented before anyone knew it.

Emergency Management Director Wendi Marcy provided a good example when she informed county commissioners during their meeting on Feb. 16. “The rolling blackouts began about 8:30 a.m. That’s when my world turned upside down,” she added.

She told commissioners that Stroud Hospital was down but would only be down about an hour and that numerous residents in the Stroud area were without power.

“Southwest Lincoln County (Fire District) had significant outages,” Marcy noted.

She pointed to the number of people with medical conditions requiring oxygen that were calling as well.

Marcy said that OG&E had advised their interruptions could last up to two hours and Canadian Valley Electric Cooperative said theirs would be 45 minutes to an hour.

Marcy further advised commissioners, too, she had tried to obtain a power grid of when and where the outages might occur, but was unable to do so.

That’s just not right.

About an hour and a half after Marcy made her announcement, OG&E sent out information that Southwest Power Pool had notified them the temporary disruptions had been discontinued for now.

Southwest Power Pool knew these rolling blackouts could and most likely would occur. There could have been a better way to inform the people this loss power might impact their lives.

It’s hard to believe in this day and time that local area and state officials who are trying their best to determine where and when and for how long that outages are likely are unable to get this critical information.

Southwest Power Pool would receive an “F” if grade cards were being handed out.

In the future, it’s essential they do a much better job