Lincoln County commissioners were advised during their meeting Tuesday that controlled power interruptions had started that morning in some areas of the county.
Emergency Management Director Wendi Marcy told them, “The rolling blackouts began about 8:30 a.m. That’s when my world turned upside down,” she added.
She informed 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 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.
A little while later in the meeting, Commission Chairman Lee Doolen said Southwest Lincoln County had just notified him they were back up. 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.
That was around 10:45 a.m.
The county courthouse was closed on Tuesday, although commissioners held their meeting. Doolen said after the meeting he was going to wait until about 5 p.m. Tuesday on his decision to close the courthouse Wednesday.
It was mentioned that Gov. Kevin Stitt has requested a State of Emergency declaration from the federal government but has not hard back yet.
Marcy 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.
She talked briefly about the next storm system that expected to hit the area after 3 p.m. on Tuesday with snow continuing into Wednesday.
In other business, commissioners voted to submit a letter to the state requesting permission to purchase school land on the NW corner of 16-4-4 near the county fairgrounds.
They decided not to discuss the first draft for updates on the Lincoln County CIRB SFY2022 six-year plan.
They voted on several items regarding the new Purchase Card program including approving linking authorization, P-Card use procedures and P-Card policies and procedures manual.
Commissioners approved accepting a donation of $5,387.40 from NAFCO Oil and Gas for District 2.
They declared Feb. 1, 2021 as Randy Adams Day.
Commissioners spent just a few minutes in executive session discussing three lawsuits, two from the State Department of Transportation and another from Centurion Pipeline. When they returned to open meeting, Doolen announced there would be no action.