DUNCAN —
Duncan Power employees fought wind gusts up to 52 miles per hour as they worked to restore electricity to about 1,000 customers early Tuesday.
The strong winds, which began between 8 and 9 p.m. Monday, increased in intensity throughout the night. The winds knocked over polycarts, broke tree branches and downed power lines throughout the City of Duncan. The wind even tore part of the roof off Wesley United Methodist Church.
David Yeager, Duncan Power director, said the strong winds kept Duncan Power employees busy into the early morning Tuesday.
“We had our most wide-spread outages from midnight to 2 (a.m.),” Yeager said. “Then we had some localized outages which were mostly just a house or two.”
By 4 a.m. Tuesday, electricity was restored to all customers.
Yeager said the power outages were caused by the wind blowing power lines into trees or tree branches into the power lines. He said the city kept track of how strong the winds were during the night and early morning.
The strongest wind gust recorded by the city was 52 miles per hour. At 9 a.m. Tuesday, the Duncan Municipal Airport’s equipment showed wind blowing at 16 miles per hour with wind gusts at 26 miles per hour, which was half the strength of the wind gusts only hours earlier.
Yeager said the strongest of the wind gusts could have caused a lot more damage than what the city received.
“That’s almost where it starts breaking things,” Yeager said.
If the aftermath was any indication of the destructive forces of the wind, several homes in Duncan had broken branches littering their yards. Polycarts and tree branches even made their way into the streets.
And there was the resulting downed power lines, caused by the wind.
“We were pleased and disappointed: Disappointed we had any large outages, but pleased we were able to get them back up in a short amount of time,” Yeager said.
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