By Robert Medley
Managing Editor
It wasn’t just the loss of electricity and downed power lines that Canadian County crews had to deal with from the late October ice storm.
Across the county, trees fell from the weight of ice and collapsed, landing in roadways. Ice damaged roads as well. Tree branches and limbs jutted from bar ditches into roadways that were scraped or slammed by passing vehicles.
Cody Stine, who worked Monday on a road-grader in the northern part of the county, cleared out of the road.
Stine used the road-grader machine to move broken branches and limbs from Banner Road just south of Waterloo Road. Power poles had been broken between Piedmont and Okarche.
But county crews were staying away from power lines or any tree debris on top of such lines.
The county crews focused on making sure heavy trees were out of the way of vehicles. The work will continue for weeks and maybe longer.
“The problem is here is that we have a lot of trees here that are kind of hanging out in the road,” Stine said. “We are trying to get them off the roads and try to kind of grade the roads back from all the moisture we’ve had,” Stine said.
“All we are in charge of is getting the trees out of the road so that people can pass,” Stine said. “We try to stay away from the trees that are on any of the power lines or anything to do with the power lines safety-wise,” Stine said.
On Saturday, Oct. 31, contractors for Oklahoma Gas & Electric mobilized north of Yukon and lines and utility poles were restored to homes in the Surrey Hills area. Power lines were strewn across the roads in many places, including Waterloo Road near Radio Road, where outages lasted in the area more than a week.
CimarronElectric Cooperative of Kingfisher had more than 1,200 power outages remaining as crews worked Monday and Tuesday.
“They are working and working all day,” said Jeff Hyatt, spokesman for CimarronElectric Cooperative in Kingfisher. Poles, crossarms and wires are down along Waterloo Road.
“We will have all the residential services on by Wednesday night,” Hyatt said.
There will be more work that will continue for at least another week, but more and more outages have been restored.
In 2002, CimarronElectric had about 13,000 customers without power during an ice storm.
“This time I think the most that we reached was 10,000 customers who were out of power at one time,” Hyatt said.
CimarronElectric Cooperative serves customers in nine counties in northwest Oklahoma, including parts of Piedmont and Okarche.
