Power Restoration efforts continue for the Third Day

We ask for your patience as we do our best to respond to the effects of Wednesday's windstorm. We continue to experience significant outages across our service territory. Currently, 2000 members are still without electrical power throughout Western's service territory. Since  Wednesday, Power has been restored to approximately 6000 members. While we feel we are making good progress, we will not be completely satisfied until everyone has their lights on.

We hope to have most residents with power by the end of Friday. However, members fed from the Ellis and Susank substations could be without electricity for an additional 24 hours due to excessive damage sustained at those locations.

We have four additional mutual aid crews assisting with the restoration with the hopes of adding two or three more today. Wednesday's windstorm, which recorded wind gusts of 80+ mph, broke over 250 power poles with approximately 100 power poles left to replace.

We understand that it is very frustrating when a neighbor has lights, and you don't, or that people across the road have lights and you don't. Often this may be because your home is on another circuit, or perhaps that your meter is damaged in a way that your neighbor's meter is not damaged. Please stay away from any downed power lines and call Western's office for your safety.

Currently, our office is open, but we ask that members call in for emergencies only, such as broken poles or downed power lines at this time. All emergencies must be reported by phone. To report an outage or a downed power line, you can call 1-800-456-6720.

We would like to thank all of our mutual aid crews and employees who are helping with the restoration efforts. We apologize for any inconvenience this event may have caused. Although we post service updates to social media, we do not monitor social media for reports of outages. We will post any updates to our website at www.westerncoop.com.

Western Cooperative Electric Association is a member-owned cooperative headquartered in WaKeeney, Kansas. Established in 1945, Western now serves more than 12,000 meters and maintains over 4,000 miles of power lines across western and central Kansas. Together, with our members' help, Western Co-op is committed to building a stronger rural America. For more information about Western, visit www.westerncoop.com.