Austin Energy Crews to Help Restore Power To North Texas Area Hit By Ice and Snow

Photo: Fallen trees such as this one in Plano were responsible for many of the area's recent outages.
Credit: Kevin Krause/Staff writer, dallasnews.com

About 20 Austin Energy linemen and two Austin Energy contract crews from Pike will leave Saturday, December 7, for North Texas to assist in restoring area electric service. More than 250,000 customers experienced power outages there today due to an ice storm.

Austin Energy crews will work in the Plano area served by Oncor. Utilities maintain mutual assistance agreements to help each other duringemergencies, if available. The utilities requesting assistance pay for the costs incurred by responding utilities and contractors.

Austin Energy crews have assisted utilities in the past in other areas of Texas and in nearby states such as Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.