Crews Work to Clean up Storm Damage in Central Texas

City officials in Austin, Texas, deployed garbage trucks to collect spoiled food in areas of the city where residents had no power for up to three days.

Utility crews scrambled to repair power lines and trim trees on Sunday, May 7 as the city tried to help residents deal with warm refrigerators and freezers.

Power was restored to all parts of the city on Monday.

Severe thunderstorms hit Central Texas during the night on Thurs., May 4, leaving 52,000 people without power in Austin. Power was still out for more than 3,500 people early Sunday morning, but 85 utility crews were out working, officials said.

Winds reached 74 mph during the worst of the storms, bringing trees and limbs down onto power lines.

Officials with Austin Energy said it took longer than normal to restore power because access to utility poles is difficult in older neighborhoods, where most of the outages occurred.

In Waco, residents and utility crews worked to clean up damage caused by storms on Saturday. National Weather Service officials said the storms included a tornado that tore up several businesses in an industrial area of the city.

The tornado did “well over $1 million” in damage to a Coca-Cola Co. bottling plant, manager Scott Bottoms said. The 50-year-old building lost much of its roof, and the storm wiped out the plant’s inventory of beverages stacked floor to ceiling on pallets.

The storms left about 24,000 Waco-area residents without power on Saturday.

Information from: Austin American-Statesman, www.statesman.com;
Waco Tribune-Herald, www.wacotrib.com.