Wintry weather has kept Socorro Electric Cooperative crews busy of late.

When the latest storm blew through, it brought outages to a wide area north of Socorro.

Richard Lopez, engineering and operations manager for SEC, said Escondida, Lemitar, Polvedra, Pueblitos and part of San Acacia were without power during early morning hours on Friday, Jan. 29.

"About 4 a.m. we lost the north circuit," he said. "We found the problem. It was a broken conductor, probably from icing. We were able to section that off and had everything on, except Pueblitos, at 6:09. We restored power to Pueblitos at 7:15."

Wednesday night, when the storm first blew in, a crew was called out around midnight to restore power in Sabinal and Veguita in northern Socorro County. Lopez said power was restored to those homes by 3 a.m.

"We've got four people on call for emergencies like that," said Lopez.

"I think we've got one of the best line crews in the Southwest," he added. "Our guys are good."

Lopez said the line crews were at their best a week earlier when three storms, each progressively stronger, swept through New Mexico.

Six two-man crews were dispatched to the western end of the SEC's service area on Jan. 22. The week's biggest blast caused outages in areas south of Datil, Alamo, several subdivisions south of Quemado.

"When we get a lot of snow, it sticks to the conductors on the power lines and causes it to sag," Lopez explained. "In some cases the line gets so heavy, the line breaks."

Starting with smaller distribution lines, Lopez said the crews would knock accumulating snow off power lines to keep that from happening. They also managed to restore power to all but about 20 homes by 10 p.m. that night.

After assuring those who were still without power were safe and could get through the night, the crews came back the next morning and finished the job with the benefit of daylight.

"By 10 or 11 o'clock the next day, all residents had power," Lopez said.

The crews encountered considerable difficulty in getting the job done, Lopez said.

They were working in the dark during a virtual blizzard and had to trudge through 2 feet of snow to get the job done.

"We had to do a lot of walking to get to areas to turn on power," Lopez said, and added that additional walking was required due to trucks that got stuck in the snow. "Five people got stuck."

Everyone got out safely and were home by midnight. At no time were they in danger, Lopez said, because they were in radio contact with the SEC office in Socorro.

It seems behind every good lineman, there's a good woman, too.

"Our office girls that do the dispatch are real good," Lopez said.

Contact T.S. Last