The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK

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June 12, 2009

About 70 lose power in Enid after OG&E pole is blown down

By Kasey Fowler, Staff Writer

A line of severe thunderstorms rolled through Garfield County Friday morning and caused minor damage, leaving about 70 people without power for a time.

According to Mike Honigsberg, Enid and Gar-field County Em-ergency Management director, most of the area got around an inch of rain.

“We got about 1.3 inches of rain in Enid,” he said. “We had hail from pea to nickel. We did have some flash flooding, but I haven’t heard any damages from that.”

John Little, OG&E; Electric Services community affairs manager, said a power pole was blown down.

“We had a few problems with the quick-moving storms this morning,” he said. “A pole snapped on Oakwood Road near Golden Oaks. I think we got them restored with power pretty quickly. We had a few other small-scale problems around town.”

He said the downed pole affected customers up to Carrier Road and left about 70 households in the area without power. He said other customers lost power across Enid, but mostly affected one to two homes.

Storms also caused some problems in Stillwater, where large hail and high winds broke windows and damaged vehicles.

“For as bad as it looked and the size of some of the hailstones, I think we’re all considering ourselves very lucky,” said Deputy City Manager Mary Rupp. “We were pretty fortunate.”

The storm moved through Payne County from northwest to southeast, producing tennis ball-sized hail, heavy rain and winds as high as 50 mph.

The roof of the community center started leaking over the office area, and the airwalk entrance to the police department also had a leak, Rupp said.

Several buildings and homes had broken windows, including Stillwater Regional Airport. Mary Morris, airport administrative assistant, reported some windows were broken and several aircraft out on the apron were damaged.

The storm also broke the skylights at the animal control building, Rupp said.



Darla Slipke, writer for the Stillwater NewsPress, contributed to this story.

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