Hundreds of ONG Customers Lose Heat

Oklahoma Natural Gas workers went door-to-door to restore heat to hundreds of homes in Moore and El Reno.

Friday, January 8th 2010, 5:17 pm

By: News 9


By Colleen Chen, NEWS 9

MOORE, Oklahoma -- Oklahoma Natural Gas workers went door-to-door to restore heat to hundreds of homes in Moore and El Reno.

High demand for natural gas left some 800 homes in Moore and more than 500 customers in El Reno with little or no gas pressure beginning this morning around 6 a.m., according to utility spokesman Don Sherry.

In El Reno, ONG officials said a partially blocked pipe slowed down the process of restoring service, and customers didn't start getting heat back until about 9 p.m. Friday.

Temperatures reached just 7 degrees in Oklahoma City Friday morning and only reached a high of about 22 degrees, according to the NEWS 9 Weather Center.

One homeowner in Moore told NEWS 9 her gas was off from around 8 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., when an ONG worker came to her home to relight her pilot light. She said at one point, the temperature inside her home was 53 degrees.

ONG officials said numerous people weren't home in Moore so crews were unable to get access to homes to restore service. Crews ended up circling streets looking for customers who just arrived home, while others worked on the source of the problem.

"We've had crews on site all day long installing equipment to enhance the capacity of the system to maintain proper amount of pressure," Sherry said.

Record breaking natural gas usage is what caused the outage. ONG customers used about 1.5 billion cubic feet of the resource in 24 hours, which is double a normal January day. That much demand was something the system just couldn't handle. Those affected by the outage said they are just glad ONG is getting it fixed.

"Hopefully we'll be roasty toasty in a few minutes," said Todd Bayles, homeowner affected by the outage.

ONG officials said the new equipment put in place Friday should ensure this won't happen again. All service is expected to be restored by the end of the night.

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