Major storm leaves residents, schools in the dark

Many Stone Oak residents did not wake up to an alarm clock, percolating coffee maker or a hot shower this Wednesday morning after a powerful storm ripped across San Antonio last night knocking out power to much of the city.  Bringing heavy rain, lightning and strong winds, the storm reportedly damaged several homes on the city’s northwest side and may have sparked a house fire just south of Loop 1604 and Huebner Road. 

No major damage was reported in Stone Oak, although many residents, schools and businesses were without power from about 2:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.  Even without electricity classes at area schools did begin on time. “We couldn’t send students back home to an empty house – homes where parents are already at work,” explained one administrator at Hardy Oak Elementary.

Without phones or computers the school could not notify parents of the outage either.  Classes that had no windows in their rooms were held in Hardy Oak's library until the electricity returned around 9:15 a.m.  "Everything went smoothly," read a statement released by Hardy Oak a few hours later.  "It was an adventure for everyone." 

Outages also occurred at Lopez Middle School, Stone Oak Elementary and Tuscany Heights Elementary.

As of 10:51 a.m. CPS was reporting 375 outages affecting 10,589 customers throughout San Antonio.  There are only about 22 residents still without power in the 78258 zip code. 

Although a traffic light at Hardy Oak Boulevard and Lopez Middle School was still out earlier this morning, most signals are functioning in the Stone Oak area. No accidents or road closures are currently being reported in Stone Oak, although there are still a few dozen roads closed throughout San Antonio due to flooding.  According to the National Weather Service, last night’s storm dropped nearly three inches of rain at the San Antonio airport.  For a list of street closures, visit https://webapps1.sanantonio.gov/streetclosures/.