As of 5:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, AEP Texas had restored electric service to all but approximately 800 customers in San Angelo and surrounding communities in the aftermath of severe weather that swept through the area Wednesday evening.   That number is a significant reduction from the approximately 21,000 left without power around 9 p.m. Wednesday evening.

Additional service crews began arriving in the area this morning to assist in the restoration effort, increasing the number of workers directly involved in the restoration effort from approximately 100 to approximately 260.

“While we continue to make steady progress, we are now addressing individual outages rather than large groups of outages,” said Fred Hernandez, AEP Texas Community Affairs manager.  “We already have restored power to over 95 percent of those impacted by the storm and anticipate further reducing the number of remaining outages by 11 p.m. this evening.  We are optimistic that restoration of service to the final pockets of outages will be addressed by 11 p.m. on Friday, if not sooner.”

Crews will continue work through the weekend to repair at least 35 transmission or distribution poles damaged or knocked down by high winds on Wednesday evening.

The highest concentration of outages is centered in the north and east sections of San Angelo; however, other surrounding areas also are experiencing outages, particularly Ballinger, Miles, Eola and Veribest.

Customers are reminded to stay away from any downed power lines as they may be electrified.

AEP Texas will be posting further updates in the News and Information section of its website at www.aeptexas.com.