AEP Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) is preparing for Hurricane Rita’s landfall and its significant impact on the Ark-La-Tex with damaging winds and flooding. No SWEPCO employees or contract tree crews are being released to Texas to assist a sister AEP company (AEP Texas) in Corpus Christi until severe weather leaves the area and outage repairs are made. “It’s time to take care of our own customers,” says Nick Akins, SWEPCO president. Sustained winds of 40 mph for several hours and 40-60 mph wind gusts for up to 12 hours can be expected locally, with the potential for over 75,000 SWEPCO customers to be without power by Sunday, September 25. Additionally, 8-12 inches of rain is forecast over a 48-hour period, beginning Saturday afternoon, which could restrict repair efforts. Customers with special emergency needs requiring power may need to seek arrangements for alternative shelter.
AEP will send 382 workers and contract personnel to assist SWEPCO, arriving Sunday and they will be positioned in the Shreveport, Longview and Texarkana areas. Another 400 AEP workers scheduled to work in Texas near Corpus Christi may be re-directed to the Ark-La-Tex as well, depending on which areas are hardest-hit by the storm. SWEPCO will have its 276 line servicers and line mechanics available to work from their own home docks, and 40 contract construction employees will be ready to work, bringing the total AEP and SWEPCO personnel dedicated to Rita storm recovery to over 1,100 people. These workers are coming in from Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan and Oklahoma.
SWEPCO’s emergency preparedness team in Shreveport is continuously monitoring Rita’s storm conditions and the impact to the company’s Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas service areas.  All SWEPCO vehicles will have full gas tanks and stocked with supplies by Friday afternoon. Staging areas have been set up for feeding and housing the additional work crews. Extra SWEPCO Arkansas crews from Northwest Arkansas will leave Sunday for the DeQueen and Nashville, Ark. area to supplement power restoration efforts in the southern part of the state. 
SWEPCO’s extreme eastern Texas areas south of I-20 are especially vulnerable to the effects of high winds on the east side of the hurricane, and include Longview, Marshall, Kilgore, Henderson, Carthage and Center.
            “Sustained hurricane or tropical storm winds can do extensive damage to our electrical system,” says Malcolm Smoak, SWEPCO’s VP-distribution region operations in Shreveport. “The threat of tornados and heavy rains can often lead to uprooted trees or broken limbs and other flying debris in power lines.” As a safety precaution against this debris, SWEPCO employees can’t work from buckets or on poles when wind speeds approach 40 mph, and must wait out the strong winds before damaged lines can be fixed.
            “The company’s Customer Solutions Center (CSC) is staffed around the clock to take power outage calls from concerned customers,” says Linda Cosby, CSC manager for SWEPCO.  The outage reporting number 1-888-218-3919.
            There are126 contract tree crews across the area prepared to respond to these adverse weather conditions. SWEPCO’s comprehensive storm manual addresses tree trimming issues, and the removal and trimming of many trees throughout the year helps prevent some potential power outage situations.
SWEPCO’s primary objective in its Emergency Restoration Plan is to restore electric service to all customers as safely and quickly as possible, and provide timely and accurate updated information to customers affected by service interruptions. “An orderly, well-coordinated approach to service restoration is needed since SWEPCO’s territory is hit on average by some 60 storm days a year, including hurricane-type conditions, ice storms and other extreme weather that causes widespread damage,” says Rene Bergeret, SWEPCO emergency restoration director.
            In major power outages, SWEPCO’s first priorities are damage assessment and restoration of power to critical customers, such as hospitals, emergency services, major communications facilities and customers on life support equipment. “Our crews must repair major electric lines which serve hundreds or thousands of customers before they can repair scattered outages,” says Smoak. “We’ll begin working as soon as possible after the high winds from Rita leave our area in an efficient manner to identify and repair problems in the field.”
            SWEPCO’s primary concern during storm restoration is safety for the public and its employees. If customers should see a hazardous condition such as a fallen power line or broken equipment, or if safety in general is in doubt, stay away, keep others back, and call SWEPCO’s customer service number at 1-888-216-3523, or the local police immediately to report the situation.
            SWEPCO serves 108,000 customers in western Arkansas, 169,000 in northwestern Louisiana and 166,000 customers in northeast Texas. Updated Rita storm information can be found at swepco.com. 
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