May 28, 2020—Wednesday night, the Hill Country experienced a severe thunderstorm with large amounts of hail, high winds and frequent lightning that swept through the Kerrville Public Utility Board’s (KPUB) service area, leaving many without power.
KPUB’s crews have been working throughout the night and all day today to restore power and are continuing to respond to power outages. After the peak of the storm, there were 5,462 customers left without power. The outages have been primarily due to storm-related damages from broken trees, downed power lines and over 20 downed utility poles.
We issued a call for help in the early hours of the morning and requested mutual assistance from neighboring utilities to restore power faster since damages were so severe. The City of Seguin Utilities, City of Boerne Utilities, Central Texas Electric Cooperative and the City of Fredericksburg all answered the call to help KPUB restore power. Contract line workers and tree crews were called in as well to expedite the power restoration process. As of 12:49 p.m., there are 292 remaining outages across KPUB’s service area affecting 1304 customers, with calls still coming in.
“Our crews have been working around the clock, and we have close to 100 boots on the ground here, all working to restore power after last night’s storm,” said Mike Wittler, general manager & CEO of KPUB. “We are very grateful for the neighboring utilities that are here helping us, too. We thank the community for their patience while the crews work to restore power as quickly and as safely as they all can.”
Outages can be reported at 830.257.2883 or kpub.com. Updates can be viewed at KPUB’s outage map at kpub.com.