Employees and contractors for the Public Service Company of Oklahoma will assist in Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.
PSO’s Stan Whiteford says they left early Sunday.
“They stayed overnight in both Jackson and Nashville, Tennessee,” he said, “and are expected to pull into Wytheville, Virginia, late this afternoon, early this evening.”
“That’s where they will get their instructions for their work assignments,” he said.
They’ll be assisting PSO’s sister company Appalachian Power, which serves parts of Virginia and West Virginia.
He says the cohort is about 70 people from the Tulsa, Lawton and McAlister districts.
Workers include “obviously line workers,” Whiteford said, “some safety personnel, as well as some fleet people, because they’ve got to have someone to take care of the vehicles while they’re up there doing all that.”
No severe weather is expected in the Tulsa area this week, but Whiteford says, even if it were, there would be no need for residents to worry about a lack of utility workers.
“That’s why we really carefully select the resources spread around different areas of the state,” he said, “so that no one particular part of our state is giving up too many resources in case anything were to happen here.”
Whiteford says Oklahoma is just one of many states lending disaster response help.
Oklahoma’s Red Cross chapter has also sent volunteers.