Tulsa Elementary Students In Dark As Wind Downs Power Lines

Thin power lines have little resistance when winds wail at 45 miles per hour.

Students at four Tulsa schools spent the majority of their day in the dark.

"All of a sudden the lights went out and we thought, 'Oh, well, we'll just keep going.'"

Students and teachers at McKinley Elementary weren't phased, studying subtraction by the light of a window.

"We're just going old school, so to speak, without technology, before they had computers and what not," teacher Kathy Williams said. "Still have paper and pencil and books, so everything's fine."

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Principal Lynette Dixon canceled recess out of concern for her young students.

"We're definitely going to keep them inside for recess because of the strong winds and some of the lines down, but they're still getting exercise," she said. "We still have a large gym where the kids are walking around doing exercise."

Public Service Company of Oklahoma crews repaired more than 50 power lines on Thursday, while a substation near the CityPlex Tower knocked out power for 1,800 people.

"This wind has caused us some problems today and we anticipate that until the wind dies down, we'll be dealing with scattered outages," PSO's Stan Whiteford said.

Downed lines meant more work for Tulsa firefighters.

"There was about an hour and a half, two hours last night where we had close to 20 calls with transformers and downed lines," May said.

"Any time you come across a downed power line, you need to treat it as live. Because a lot of those generating stations are computer operated and they may re-energize at any time."

At last check, PSO is reporting no outages.

Of course, that can change as wind gusts vary.