Dallas City Councilwoman Paula Blackmon wants to work with Oncor to brainstorm ways the city can help in times of crisisOncor says last week’s series of thunderstorms that wreaked havoc across North Texas was the worst in the utility company’s 112-year history.
Dallas City Councilwoman Paula Blackmon, who represents District 9 in East Dallas, is calling on Oncor to investigate everything that led to prolonged power outages. “We looked across the street and the people across had power,” he remembers. “We thought it was just a temporary kind of thing, but it wasn’t.”
“The intent with this is to look at what we did well, what we can do better, and are there places where we can improve our infrastructure,” said Blackmon in an interview with NBC 5. “This is in no way saying someone failed and you succeeded. It is truly looking at: What we need to do to work better, not harder.”
A spokesperson for Oncor said in a statement: ‘In many of these communities, the outages were among the most complex and time-consuming and required the reconstruction of distribution equipment and replacement of utility poles and transformers.’ “It’s not about pointing blame, it’s really about working smarter,” said Blackmon. “We have limited resources, there’s going to be more frequencies of these storms, so how do we work together to get us through to the other side?”“Sure, I’d like to know what exactly it was,” said Applequist.