No Holiday For Those Repairing Weather Heads

Most people were off work on Tuesday for the Christmas holiday.  However, several Tulsa electricians volunteered to keep working.  The News On 6's Carina Sonn reports they were making repairs to damaged weather heads and meters that were keeping some families from having their electrical service restored.

Dozens of electricians are still working with the City of Tulsa's Operation Power Up! to get electricity back to customers.  Understandably, most of those people took Christmas day off, but not everyone.  A handful of workers traded the coziness of the holiday to give the gift of power.  Electricity isn't on most people's Christmas wish list, but that's all the Poyner family wanted.   When the ice storm hit, Deborah figured they'd be without power for a week, at the most.

"It's been 15 days.  And, you live out of an ice chest and you carry flashlights around.  You use candles and you just do what you do," said Deborah Poyner who has not had power.

Her family was fortunate enough to have had hot water and heat from a floor furnace.  They also had a generator to power the TV.  The Poyners put in a call to Operation Power Up several days ago and early Christmas morning help arrived.

"I opened the door and he said 'do you have electric' and I said 'no are you going to turn it on?' and he said 'yeah,'" said Deborah Poyner.

Steve Childers is one of the electricians working on Christmas.  He's a Tulsa contractor and says he was also without electricity for a week.

"I didn't like it very much so I know how it feels and Christmas is supposed to be giving so that's what I'm doing," said electrician Steve Childers.

Childers says he's already done more than a dozen jobs for the city since Friday.  It usually takes from one to four hours to make the repairs.  He says the work has to be done, and families without power don't get a holiday, so he'll go down the list until everyone is back online.

"It's really a great opportunity to do something for perfect strangers," said electrician Steve Childers.

"I can see my Christmas lights blink, my tree lights now and I can put food in my fridge.  And, my boys can come home and play with their Christmas gifts, all thanks to Steve," said Deborah Poyner.