News from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission

Jim Palmer, Director of Information

May 7, 1999

OG&E…

OG&E spokesman Paul Renfrow reports 12,000 customers remain without power. That’s 7,000 fewer than on Thursday. Renfrow said OG&E is getting very close to restoring power to all of its customers capable of receiving it. OG&E wants its customers without power to get back in touch with them so they can identify them as quickly as possible. Renfrow said in the Oklahoma City metro customers can call 272-9595 and statewide 800-522-6870 or they can go to the walk up centers in Moore’s New City Center, 12^th Ave. and I-35, and in Del City at Brannon’s, SE 29^th and Sunnylane. Crews continue to go door to door on the fringe of the heavily damaged areas.

(OAEC) Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperatives…

Sidney Sperry, Director of member relations for OAEC, said only 12 customers remained without service in the Norman area served by Oklahoma Electric Cooperative and those customers are expected to have service by Friday at 5:00 p.m. Cimarron Electric of Kingfisher expects to have power for all of its customers restored by Friday at midnight. KAMO Power has re-energized two of Stillwater based Central Rural Electric Cooperative’s (CREC) substations putting 650 of its 1,250 customers without power back on line. Crews are working to repair a distribution line across I-35 which will, no later than Friday at 5:00 p.m., put about 600 more customers back in service leaving about 200 still without service.

PSO…

Bill Crawley of PSO said construction crews continue to work on rebuilding towers for the 345 KV line west of Stroud. Completion will be sometime next week.

ONG…

Oklahoma Natural Gas Co. spokesman Don Sherry said ONG has re-evaluated its original storm outage figure of about 8,500 without gas service. Sherry said the new, more accurate figure of outages in the "total scope" and "immediate aftermath" of the tornadoes is 6,650 customers without service. Of that number Sherry said 2,500

UTILITY SERVICE UPDATE , page 2

ONG (cont’d)…

are too heavily damaged to restore service; 2,653 are in need of some minor repairs and/or city inspection and 1,497 remain to have service restored. Sherry said as the

crews go door to door a lot of people are not home so they are leaving door hangers with contact information and will return.

Southwestern Bell (SWB)…

Bell Spokesman Jeff Konkel said SWB has approximately 2,000 customers without access to residential phone service. The SWB network is performing well with only one central office still operating on back-up power. Konkel said there are reports of isolated service disruptions due to downed electric lines, wet phone lines and broken telephone poles. Southwestern Bell has donated 10 phones for victims’ use in Mulhall. And the company has boosted its wireless capacity by installing four mobile wireless antennas in Moore, Del City and Oklahoma City. Information on free phone services to disaster victims is available at two locations: Moore at 316 NE 27^th Street and Midwest City at 15^th and South Air Depot. Customers may also call 800-464-7928.

GTE…

GTE spokesman Bob Grey says 30 to 50 residential customers in Stroud remain without phone service. Full restoration is expected by Sunday afternoon.

-occ-