As you all know, we had three severe and damaging storms over six days, beginning with an EF2 tornado. Each of these storms alone would have posed significant challenges, but the combined impact made the task an immense undertaking. We are grateful for the assistance we received from nine sister cooperatives. With their support, we restored power to all storm-related outages by Friday, June 23rd.
We sincerely thank our valued members for their extraordinary kindness, patience, and understanding throughout the restoration process. Your unwavering support during these unprecedented and devastating weather events has been remarkable. Furthermore, we extend our heartfelt appreciation for your continued patience and understanding as we diligently work toward the recovery phase following these storms. During this phase, our primary focus is to locate any damaged equipment that has yet to fail, address issues with guy wires and leaning poles, and attend to various other crucial tasks.
When responding to power outages, our primary focus is to ensure the safety of our members and personnel. Our dedicated teams work tirelessly to swiftly and securely clear trees from our power lines and equipment, aiming to restore power as safely and efficiently as possible. We strive to minimize storm damage and power outages throughout the year with our comprehensive Right-of-Way Management program. While we do what we can within our Right-of-Way program, it is important to note that the majority of damage sustained during the storms was a direct result of trees falling from areas outside of the Right-of-Way.
Therefore, as a reminder to our members, we do not directly handle the removal of tree debris resulting from severe weather events. Once power is restored following a storm, it becomes the responsibility of the member to address any tree debris on their property.
Additionally, we want to let our members know that the recovery process from the recent storms may cause some delays in new construction projects. Restoring power and ensuring the reliability of our system requires significant resources and manpower, which could affect the planned construction timeline. We are actively working to minimize any disruptions.
We remain committed to our valued members at Bowie-Cass Electric Cooperative. Once again, we want to express our gratitude to our members for their patience and understanding as we navigate the challenges posed by severe weather events, the recovery process, and our commitment to delivering safe and reliable electricity.
If you have any questions or would like further information, please contact our office at 903-846-2311.