Leon County power outage costs local business
A business owner claims she lost thousands of dollars worth of product.
MARQUEZ, Texas (KBTX) - A Marquez business owner claims she lost thousands of dollars worth of product as a result of Wednesday’s power outage.
The power was restored at 11:32 a.m. the next day, due to a portable generator being delivered from Tyler.
For a store known for its frozen treats, it was too late. Lindsey Judd, the owner of Kountry Kitchen, lost nearly all of her inventory after her freezers went out.
“You’re losing tens of thousands of dollars in revenue, plus you’re paying your people, plus you’re losing product. And that doesn’t even account for just the inconvenience and the stress of it,” Judson said.
According to Judson, this isn’t the first outage in the area that’s caused her business to take a hit. She estimates that she loses around five thousand dollars in product alone each time they lose power.
“You just have to keep operating and keep going. You don’t have a choice, really. Like you can’t just shut down because you’re inconvenienced,” she said.
Leon County ISD canceled classes on Thursday as a result of the outage, which Leon County Emergency Management said was caused by a failed transformer.
Read the county’s full statement below:
On Wednesday evening (9/29/23) at approximately 8:28 rpm a large transformer at the ONCOR power substation in Jewett Tx failed. This failure caused what was described as a “chain of explosions” resulting in damage to the substation and a loss of power to the Hwy 79 corridor from Oakwood to Marquez in Leon County. Parts of this outage was restored in a few areas of Oakwood and Buffalo however the cities of Jewett and Marquez have been without power since the initial failure.
The Leon ISD CANCELLED classes for Thursday 9/21 for all the students in the district.
To ONCOR’s credit, they immediately trucked in a portable substation from Tyler which arrived on scene at approximately 4:00 am and started the Installation process and are currently Energizing the system to hopefully have power restored by this afternoon.
There have been no reports of damage or injury to the Emergency Management Office.
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