Haboob Knocks out Lubbock Power and Light

I learned an engineering lesson during last night's maxi-dust storm (I just can't bring myself to say "Haboob"). Our power was down from the time it hit the airport till 12:30 this morning. During what seemed to be days, the power would flicker just enough to get your hopes up and then not appear again for another hour or so. We called L P & L so many times that they actually knew who we were when they heard our voices. Their phone banks were so busy because of downed trees and power outages that it was impossible to even get an answer before 9 or 10 pm. Frustrating to say the least. With talks of rate increases and such, all I can say is, during an event like we had yesterday evening, we should be able to at least talk to someone to let them know what is going on in your area and find out if outages are isolated, or maybe, find out a ball park time the power may come back on. It all seems very simple until you are actually having to live through it. Finally a Tech pulled up in a truck (after I had gone out to find him) and explained to us that "we are on the old Excel Line" and should have been getting power from LP&L in the first place....ha. funny. But it was taken in jest. Seems the line that is behind our house stretches for miles and miles and it could actually be a tree on a line on the other side of town that is keeping our house from getting power.. For six hours the houses across the street, the airport, the golf course, all had electricity. Although it seems we had to beg to get ours back on, I believe the L P & L guys did and are doing a great job to get power back up completely. As of this morning there were still over a thousand homes without power. I would not want to have to do what they do in the conditions that they have to work in. It takes a special breed to do that. Yes, I was forced to get to know my 2 worthless cats and cowdog last night out of pure boredom and we all missed Dancing With the Stars.