OMAHA-Omaha Public Power District held a press conference early Saturday evening addressing the power outages in their service area.

OPPD CEO and President Javier Fernandez emphasized safety and recognized the hard work of OPPD employees and contractors

"Please be sure to stay away from downed power lines, please assume they are energized." 

"As a safety focused organization, I'm very happy to report that during our restoration efforts since early this morning that no OPPD employees or contractors have been injured."

Fernandez also offered his apologies for the power outages, but shared encouraging news of progress. 

"We are very sorry, we are sorry that so many of you have had to go without power for this long.  We truly appreciate the role power plays in the lives of all of you.  Any outage, let alone one of this magnitude is very very difficult."  

"OPPD has made and continues to make significant progress, steady progress in our restoration efforts.  More than 85,000 customers' power has been restored. We also know that we have right under 97,000 customers who are still without power, we know that can feel frustrating and we also want to be very transparent about it." 

Fernandez then outlined the protocol OPPD follows when restoring power.  Focusing on institutions everyone relies on, like hospitals and critical infrastructure.  Next, they prioritize the work that will restore power to the most amount of people possible, as quickly and safely as possible. OPPD does not prioritize based on specific areas or parts of town.  Work that is the most complex to restore, which has seen damage for downed limbs or debris takes the most amount of time.

OPPD stated that their crews, with the help of contractors and other utilities, will work around the clock to restore power for the next few days. With that continued effort OPPD anticipates 2/3 of customers that are without power from the peak of last night will be restored by midnight tonight, and that is their expectation. 

To see the full press conference from OPPD follow the link: 

 https://www.youtube.com/embed/AaArPa7AEeQ?fbclid=IwAR1JqOl8qW7qInqpTeE1eyBgq-qFlVqCYTWcxT2uWmL4xAGNWoyxUea0oC0