GEORGETOWN, Texas — From previous winter storms to the recent wind we have been experiencing, Texas weather has a tendency to be unpredictable.
But Georgetown resident Ryan Hey is noticing something consistent in his La Conterra neighborhood.
"I've counted 23 separate incidents where power has gone out over the last three years," Hey said.
Just this week, Hey said the power has gone out twice from the strong winds, affecting not only his ability to get things done but also his job because he works from home.
"So, of course, I can't work, which causes some issues and then just general quality of life, not having power to cook breakfast, get stuff done," Hey said. "I'm not the only one. There's a lot of people who are getting frustrated that the front half of this neighborhood loses power more than any other community that I've lived in."
Hey said he regularly sees social media pages where he notices his neighbors also posting about experiencing outages.
"They're getting very frustrated, and they want accountability. They want answers as to why this is happening. We don't want finger pointing," Hey said.
Hey is determined to get that accountability from his utility company, Oncor.
"I have a very long Facebook PM thread with Oncor detailing my grievances. I also have a very long text message thread. I've called multiple times," Hey said.
When pressed for a statement, Oncor provided KVUE with the following:
"We recognize repeat outages are very frustrating for our customers and we are familiar with the multiple outages experienced by this community. It appears that severe weather was responsible for a large portion of the outages experienced, including the significant wind impacts responsible for the outages experienced this week. Following those most recent outages, our team performed work in the area to help improve reliability even in the face of severe weather. This included replacing poles, overhead conductor adjustments, and performing additional tree trimming. While we apologize for the inconvenience caused by these outages, we believe these improvements will help lessen the potential for similar outages in the future. We will also be reaching out to customer to fully review his outage history and walk through the improvements made to this area."
Those are improvements that Hey desperately wants to see.
"We're about ready to have even worse weather come in and we're all bracing for it," Hey said.