For the last two weeks, wildfires have ravished parts of the Great Plains — including Beckham County and western Oklahoma at large.
Two weeks ago, the state set a record for the most fires reported in a single day.
While that has sent fire departments, most of which are staffed solely by volunteers running toward danger, the electric companies and country employees have also played a vital role in prevention and restoration.
During last week’s fires, many customers of North Fork Electric lost electricity.
North Fork Electric Co-Op Director of Operations Shawn Sawyer says customers should be aware that these outages may occur again in the future, but that the co-op is not preemptively cutting electricity.
Rather, the electricity is cut in a fail-safe for the worst case scenarios.
“We had a lot of calls where people had heard media from places like California where it was just being cut without cause for prevention,” Sawyer explained. “That is not what we are doing. Instead, we have a system in place that only cuts it if it shows high risk.”
Sawyer called that system a “one shot capability.”
In short, that means on days that have both high winds and low humidity, the system picks up just on incidence of a high risk for electrical lines to start a fire.
That can be an “arch,” or when two electrical lines touch, or another fault.
“Under normal circumstances, we have a three fault procedure,” Sawyer advised.
“In these very dangerous times, we are now going to one fault.”
Sawyer stated that it is part of what is the “wildfire mitigation plan.”
It is an industry standard.
Sawyer wants vulnerable citizens who need electricity for medical reasons to be aware that this could happen again to prevent wildfires.
As of Wednesday, North Fork has found 35 downed lines and poles from all the wind storms.
The group is also utilizing drones with thermal imaging to make sure lines with potential for falling are addressed before the next wind storms.
“These drones can see the tops of lines that our guys just driving around can’t see. We are doing everything we can on calm days to be prepared for anything that may come ahead.
Our goal and hope is to keep any outages from happening. But, we do want people to know it could because we are still at risk,” Sawyer said.
Sawyer also added that North Fork will never cut electricity without the system showing a reason to cut it.
He advised customers to look at the Forestry Service’s website to check for wildfires.
“We know it is a hardship for people to be without electricity, so we are working to minimize that while also minimizing wildfires from electrical lines.
We want our vulnerable areas to be aware that this may happen again, but only briefly. Just be prepared is our best advice,” he said.
“Be aware that if your electric is cut, we aren’t like California and just cutting it. It is cut because our system is preventing anything that could cause a fire. It is wildfire mitigation,” Sawyer added.
