Oncor crews head east to assist in hurricane aftermath

About 450 Oncor employees and contractors headed to Florida and Georgia on Thursday morning as part of a mutual assistance program in anticipation of damage from Hurricane Matthew.

Setting new wire, replacing poles and removing trees from power lines are a few ways that North Texas utility crews will be helping to restore power in the aftermath of the Category 4 storm.

“We go and help partner utilities in their time of need after a natural disaster or other large outage event,” Oncor spokesman Kris Spears said.

Crews will were to stay in Mississippi on Thursday night and head farther east Friday morning, allowing them to get into position to go where needed the most after the hurricane makes landfall.

“With a storm like this, you never really know what sort of devastation will be caused,” Spears said. “It’s to our benefit to start a couple of days early, hang back and take direction from these mutual assistance partners, and position us in areas that we can make the most impact following the storm.”

About 10 to 15 trucks left from the Tanger Outlet Mall in Terrell on Thursday morning. Only one or two trucks from participating service areas are making the journey so Oncor can still meet the needs of local customers, Spears said.

This is not a first for these crews, who Spears said are experienced working in these situations.

“We helped after hurricanes Ike, Katrina and Rita, and we went up to the Northeast after Superstorm Sandy,” he said. “They’ve seen this sort of devastation, they are experts at what they do, and know what to do when they get on the ground.”

Spears said the utility companies that the crews are going to help have themselves helped the DFW area, such as in December 2013 when a day of freezing rain and four days of temperatures in the teens left a thick coating of ice across the area.

They “have come to help us when we’ve needed them, and we are more than happy to return the favor,” he said.

Locally, Hurricane Matthew is disrupting travel for some at the airports. Flight cancellations at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport were up to 58 Thursday morning, Dallas Love Field to six, according to Flightaware.com. The site doesn’t list which flights are specific to the hurricane, but the majority are flights in and out of Florida.

Where to find travel alerts for the five largest U.S. airlines:

American Airlines: www.aa.com/travelalerts

Delta Air Lines: www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/traveling-with-us/advisories/hurricane-matthew.html

JetBlue Airways: www.jetblue.com/JetblueAlerts/WeatherUpdate.aspx?intcmp=global-travelalert

Southwest Airlines: www.southwest.com/html/advisories/swa_travel_advisory_20168281475106509419.html

United Airlines: www.united.com/CMS/en-US/travel/news/Pages/travelnotices.aspx

This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Oncor crews head east to assist in hurricane aftermath."