Global Courant
More than 300,000 customers in the southern U.S. were without power Monday following damaging storms over the weekend, leaving residents seeking relief as sweltering temperatures continued to scorch the region.
At least one person in Oklahoma died as a result of the prolonged power cuts, officials said.
Most of the disturbances occurred in Oklahoma, where severe storms brought winds of up to 80 mph around Tulsa Saturday night, according to the National Weather Service. About 165,000 customers in the city still had no power Monday as crews scrambled to repair more than 700 broken poles and downed wires, said Amy Brown, a spokesperson for the Public Service Company of Oklahoma.
One person on a ventilator died as a result of the power outage, Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum said at a press conference in the city.
Power suppliers warned some outages could not be fixed until the end of the week, and Bynum urged residents to be mindful of family and neighbors who rely on electronic medical devices.
A blistering heat wave will continue throughout the week in Texas, Louisiana and parts of the southern US. Thunderstorms, heavy and heavy rain are possible in the southeast for the next few days. Critical fire conditions persist in the Southwest. pic.twitter.com/z7XEup0zD0
—@NWS
“Please check them,” he said.
Overall, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana had more than 300,000 customers without electricity as of Monday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.
In Louisiana, officials closed nearly two dozen state offices on Monday due to severe weather risks. On top of the blackout, a heat wave continued to bring dangerous temperatures to Texas in excess of 100 F, and some parts of the state were issued excessive heat warnings that would last at least through Wednesday.
“It has been excruciating,” Leigh Johnson, a resident of Mount Vernon, Texas, told Dallas television station KXAS. She had been without power for about three days.
“It was awful because it’s like the heat index is so bad that we literally have to sit in the cold baths to cool off. So do our animals, we have to put them in the bathtub to prevent them from getting heat stroke, so it was bad,” she said.
About 4,000 customers were also still waiting for electricity in the Texas town of Perryton after a devastating tornado erupted last week.
Blackouts also spread to Mississippi, where some people struggled to get medicine after pharmacies and grocery stores had to close, according to WLBT-TV. As crews worked to restore power to Mississippi, multiple tornadoes swept across the state overnight, killing one and injuring nearly two dozen.
A street in Shreveport, La., is dark except for the streetlights in the early hours of Saturday. (Henrietta Wildsmith/The Shreveport Times/The Associated Press)
