PSO Crews Work To Restore Power After McCurtain County Storms

PSO crews worked around the clock to restore power to thousands of customers after severe storms ripped through McCurtain County.

The damage left behind from Friday's tornado is devastating and caused over 2,000 PSO customers to lose power.

"Lived here most of my life and we've never seen anything like this in Idabel before. We work a lot of hurricanes, and this is what this looks like, smaller scale but exactly the same thing," says Jimmy Peek.

Peek lives in hard-hit Idabel and has worked as a PSO serviceman for 31 years. He was glad to see the response from line crews who worked hard to bring power back to the community.

"I've lost part of my property, my family has lost part of their property, we'll be months getting over this, and we've got plenty of help, PSO sent plenty of help, gave the guys working here with me a break, I'd go with them anywhere," Peek says.

Wayne Greene with PSO says in some areas, crews had to work in rough conditions to get power restored.

"The circumstances were just very very challenging … we had about a mile of feeder line that was the only source of power to Eagletown that was literally buried under fallen pine trees, and at the bottom of all those trees were smashed PSO poles and swamp," says Greene.

He says getting power back to the people of McCurtain County gives them one less thing to worry about.

"We're very empathetic to the situation that the people of Idabel are facing right now, they've got a lot to do to recover from this, we're glad that one of the things that they don't have to worry about is power and the grid," Greene says.

He says he's thankful for the crews that worked so hard to help a community in need.

"The line people are the essential element of keeping the electrical grid in operation. Without them nothing works," says Greene.