Power outages: Majority of power expected to be restored by Sunday, Oncor says

RICHARDSON, Texas - Thousands of people are still dealing with power outages from Tuesday morning's storms in North Texas and now Oncor says many will have to wait until tomorrow to have their lights back on.

In a statement on Saturday night, Oncor said storms earlier in the day, which brought high winds and quarter-sized hail, delayed efforts to restore power.

Oncor says most people who lost power on Tuesday can expect their lights to be back on Sunday morning.

Anyone who lost power in storms on Thursday, Friday or Saturday should expect to see power back by Sunday night, according to the company.

Another round of storms on Sunday led to an increase in outages.

As of 6:25 p.m. on Sunday, Oncor says about 30,000 customers are still without power, including 15,000 in Dallas County.

About 3,000 of those outages are in Richardson, where neighbors Ashley Chiechi and Cynthia Schmidt were brought together by the impact of Tuesday's storms.

"I really thought it wasn’t going to end until the windows burst out, or a tree fell through the roof," said Chiechi.

"Our neighbors, our entire neighborhood, had multiple trees on people’s roofs," said Schmidt.  

Both lost power until Chiechi's came back on today at 4 a.m.

Schmidt is still waiting for hers to come back on.

In those days in the dark, the two say they didn't see crews out in their neighborhood.

 "We’ve never seen mass destruction like this around here, and we didn’t see trucks for days," said Chiechi.

It left them feeling alone.

"The feeling is just incredible helpless," she said.

Like much of North Texas on Tuesday morning, Richardson experienced hurricane-force winds of up to 75 miles per hour.

On Saturday, trees can still be seen on top of homes and cars and the clean-up is far from over.  

"We really do feel their pain, we know that their patience is running thin, and their frustration is high," said Richardson City Manager Don Magner.  

Magner says there are 36 areas in the city that need an assessment from Oncor before city crews can clear the area.

"We absolutely need Oncor to create a safe environment for our crews. We don’t have the specialized tools or training to work around live power lines," he said.

Oncor says roughly 11,000 crew members from multiple states are still working on restoration, although some of the issues are more complex.

If there is damage to a meter base or weatherhead at a home, Oncor crews cannot fix that. 

The homeowner needs to contact a licensed electrician that needs to get a permit from the city and the city needs to inspect the work when it's complete. 

"When wires come down, they tend to pull a lot of things down and a lot of the infrastructure associated with the private property was impacted as well in terms of residence and commercial," said Magner.

Until then, people like Chiechi and Schmidt are left to comfort each other while they wait.

"It takes everyone, we all have to be in this together or we’re just going to see this over and over again," said Chiechi.

Richardson' city manager says collection for debris piles will start on Monday. It could take up to a month or longer to collect everything.

READ MORE: Arlington woman killed while trying to clear storm debris

Another question many have had is who is responsible for trimming trees to make sure that are not at risk in a storm?

According to Oncor, it's the homeowner's responsibility to maintain the trees around the service lines on their property.