During Winter Storm Mara, Taylor was one of the hardest hit communities in Texas, with approximately 8,600 customers without power during the storm’s peak, which took place from Jan. 31 – Feb. 2, 2023, and caused downed tree limbs, power lines and utility poles, as well as more than $5.3 million direct cleanup costs for the city.
At the April 27 meeting of the Taylor City Council, Armando Perez, customer operations representative with Oncor Electric Delivery, gave a presentation on the storm response from Oncor, which delivers electricity to more than 1.3 million Texans and operates more than 140,000 miles of electrical lines and is the main provider for our area.
“It’s always a pleasure to see you here, Armando; I am surprised you don’t have grey hair yet,” joked District 4 Councilman Robert Garcia at the meeting. “This was a substantial storm. All you have to do is drive around Taylor to see the new poles that have been put up. It was crazy out there, but I greatly appreciate the patience of you and your staff.”
Perez said the main culprit for the bulk of the outages and damages was the ice itself, taking place during multiple waves of precipitation, which not only caused damage to power lines and poles, but also made roadways hazardous and in some cases impassable, delaying repairs.
“For Winter Storm Mara, the impacts we experienced severely were through ice accumulation both directly and indirectly,” Perez said.
“As you can see, ice accumulation can increase the weight of tree branches up to 30 times, and that can lead to a point of failure and a lot of time, branches that are clear of our lines, when they experience that kind of weight, can easily creep into what we consider our safe zone.”
Perez also detailed the aftereffects, which resulted in more outages even after the storm was over.
“When the weather gets a bit more favorable, and we get above freezing, it causes some of the limbs that went down below our lines to traject back up,” Perez said. “So in some of our areas where we may have restored power, areas that hadn’t gotten impacted get impacted as these branches spring back up.”
Perez said during the storm, crews, including more than 3,000 mutual aid workers from across Texas as well as other states, worked 16-hour shifts in precipitation and subfreezing temperatures.
“A lot of the time, our linemen live in the same communities, so very likely they are going home to a house that doesn’t have power so they would get whatever rest they could and maybe just get dry, especially when there is constant rain,” Perez said.
City leaders expressed their appreciation for Oncor’s efforts and commended the company for improved communication during this storm, which took place through different channels, including their website, MyOncor App, as well as social media, text alerts and more.
“I want to reiterate what I have told you time and time again: we really appreciate you and everything you do for Oncor,” said Mayor Brand Rydell. “I just really commend you on your communication and your responsiveness. You are a great partner with the city on all the disasters we have had to grapple with.”
At-large Councilman Dwayne Ariola also complimented Oncor’s performance.
“Communications I think was a lot better this time than last time (Winter Storm Uri),” Ariola said.
“We greatly appreciate it,” he added. “I think it was handled a whole lot better. Of course, there is always room for improvement, but I just want the people to know that these personnel were working 16-hour shifts and transit time, and then trying to eat something and get some sleep.”
Garcia also praised the city’s cleanup efforts and asked how Taylor could continue to work with Oncor to finish the cleanup work.
“I appreciate everything y’all have done to help clean up, but we are only 90 percent done,” Garcia said. “I’m really hoping that the city and Oncor can work together to finish the job because we still have limbs that are just hanging on by a thread... Is there anything that Oncor and the city can do to finish that job?”
Perez said people can call the customer service line to report these kinds of issues.
“Yes, so we would never promote or suggest that anyone get close to our power lines to address a broken limb or to prune a tree,” Perez said. “Obviously if it’s within our clearing zone, it is within our responsibility to handle, so for areas that have been identified, I would suggest for people to contact us, … what we do is get a local personnel to go out there and look at it and verify if yes this is something that we need to do, or this is not us so in the case where it is ours, we create a work order and then get crews out there to address it, but it’s a collaboration and a communication effort.”
For more information, call 888-313-4747 or go to Oncor.com.
