SWEPCO Power Outage Affects Nearly 1,000 in Bossier Parish

It was sometime around 2:00 this morning when the sound of my smoke alarm beeping brought me to my feet.  It was chirping and even in my slumber, I recognized that sound. The electricity is out.

At this writing, just after 4:00 am, AEP Southwestern Electric Power Company is reporting that 898 customers are without electricity in the Bellevue Road and Princeton areas.  To be exact, two hundred sixty four in the Bellevue Road area and another six hundred thirty four in the Princeton area.

Once I shook the sleepy out of my head, I hit my feet and took a look out the window and discovered that ours was not the only house in the dark.  It was dark all around us.

Okay, so I'm confused. We just went through several days of repeated hammering from thunderstorms and not even a flicker in our electricity, but now, hours after Wednesday evening's shower, here I stand in the dark?

Using only the light of my cell phone, I brushed my teeth, took my vitamins and dressed in the dark. Thank goodness I showered before bed last night. Then I was off to the truck to drive in to work, thinking I would surely see some type of accident or something that I'd determine as the culprit of this outage.

Yet, there was nothing. No wreck, no downed power line. Just darkness, until I got to Highway 80 where it was business as usual. No problems there. So, I'm not exactly sure what's causing the issue as there's no explanation that I could find on the SWEPCO website, but I'm sure the linemen are on their way.

Thank you to those men and women who fight through the worst of storms and inclement weather to keep us in our modern conveniences. They deal with lightning, frozen trees and late nights/early mornings with long hours, just to make sure my fire alarm quits chirping. Just want them to know how much they are appreciated!