“Worse than the storm of 1938.” That is what many of the older folks are saying after seeing the results of last week’s winter storm that hit Greer County.

The weather forecasters kept telling us it would be a strong storm, and they were right.

Wednesday night it began with light rain. The rain continued until around noon, then it broke loose with heavy freezing rain that eventually turned into sleet.

It didn’t take long for a bad situation to become worse as trees and power lines were soon covered with between 1/2 and 3/4 inches of ice.

The snap of falling branches and the flickering of lights followed.

City crews went to work as soon as possible to get power to the citizen’s of Mangum. Three of our six generators at the Mangum Power Plant began humming as slowly the crews were able to fix lines to residences.

We purchase power from Western Farmers Electric Cooperative and many of their lines were down. We are very fortunate that we still have our power plant for use in emergencies.

It didn’t take long for people in surrounding communities to hear we had power and food at our local stores.

Workers at Mangum Oil and Gas (MOG) were swamped as people from a 50 mile radius came to Mangum for fuel and supplies.

Cars were lined up for at least one block around both MOG and Love’s Country Store. Many waited in line for up to 45 minutes just to get fuel.

To read the complete story pick up a copy of this week’s Mangum Star-News or read the online edition by clicking the link in the upper right hand portion of the page.