Central and western Oklahoma continues to thaw out and clean up from a three-day storm that left behind 2 inches of ice in some areas.
As of Thursday afternoon, there were still around 320,000 power outages statewide. Even with 3,000 additional workers on the ground for Oklahoma Gas & Electric Compnay, OG&E Chairman, President and CEO Sean Trauschke said some Oklahoma City residents won’t see their power restored until late next week.
"You know, this is probably the most severe storm we’ve ever had on our system. We’ve probably had in excess of over 500,000 outages on our system," Trauschke said.
Cleanup from tree and property damage will be the next major undertaking. Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management Director Mark Gower said they still don’t have a dollar figure on the damage.
"We waited for wave three so that we could go through and get a full damage assessment. So, we’re working now with our locals to get that idea of what impacts to our counties and our cities are, and then we’ll have an estimate read to go in the next couple of days," Gower said.
State emergency officials are working to get a federal disaster declaration for affected counties.