CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Ice buildup Monday caused power outages in some of our more northern viewing areas.
Omar Lopez at AEP Texas told 3NEWS about the areas hit by blackouts once the freezing rain began to fall.
"Our system is holding up," Lopez said. "We haven't seen a lot of outages. We've had some in Aransas Pass and Rockport area. There was a small outage here in Corpus Christi this morning. But for the most part across our whole service territory, our system is staying strong."
At one point in Rockport, almost 400 people were without power because of downed lines.
Lopez said they're hoping there won't be much more precipitation with our continuing freeze. "Schools... we'll being going back to school tomorrow," he said. "A lot of people will be going back to work tomorrow. And that's where the concern is from 6 to 9 a.m.. So we do what we can here to conserve energy and we remind everyone let's follow ERCOT's lead here because they're watching the grid and the load and when they say conserve energy, that's when we have to respond and do our part."
AEP Texas also reminds homeowners to be cautious when hooking up generators.
Assistant manager of a Rockport hardware store, Mary Kay Hill, said supplies are down to just a few left.
"We've been very busy," Hill said. "We've had several that we brought in knowing that it was going to get cold. So we brought in extras. We don't have a lot left."
She said they always remind customers to follow instructions with generators and be careful to not feed power back to the pole if they are in a blackout.
"Could very well electrocute one of our linemen or have a fire," Hill said.
Have an electrician connect the bigger generators and with smaller generators, make sure they're used away from the house so carbon monoxide fumes can't affect those inside.
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