North Texas power employees prepared to help after Hurricane Matthew

DALLAS - Power companies are expecting widespread outages along the Atlantic coast.

Oncor is sending 450 employees from North Texas to help restore power after the storm. They left from Terrell early Thursday morning.

The crews will arrive in Mississippi to ride out the storm. Then they will be in place to respond to the hardest hit areas of Georgia and Florida.

“This is what we do, so whether we’re doing it here in North Texas or after Hurricane Katrina… Superstorm Sandy, these guys know what they’re doing. They’ve seen some massive devastation in big storms like this before. And in the same token, these utilities that we go to help as part of this mutual assistance come to North Texas to help us,” said Kris Spears, a spokesman for Oncor.

All of the Oncor employees headed to the coast volunteered for the assignment.