MIDLAND, Texas — A Midland neighborhood has been experiencing power outages every time the weather gets too hot or too cold, the neighborhood says.
Since moving into the Free Land neighborhood a year and a half ago, Jen Hinman says her and her family have been consistently experiencing outages.
"We live here, we pay our bill, we want power that’s not cutting out," said Hinman.
And with the recent cold temperatures, the last thing someone wants is no power.
"The last three mornings we’ve woken up with no power," Hinman said. "Obviously the house gets really chilly, we’re on electric we don’t have any natural gas here so that means our well doesn’t work. We don’t have water. It’s very inconvenient to be here for hours when you don’t have any power."
With no heat in her home, it's become a daily struggle.
"Well for starters we can’t cook," Hinman said. "We can’t feed our children, we have to go out and spend money to feed our kids. We don’t have light so we can’t use the internet, we can’t read our books, we can't do anything we would typically need to do in a morning. So it really just throws off the entire day."
It was to Hinman's surprise, when she recently got a message.
"I just was recently added to the group chat for the neighborhood," Hinman said.
She found out she wasn't the only one going through this ordeal.
"I’ve learned that it’s been happening for 10 years, some of the residents have been here that long," said Hinman. "It’s cold out, we want heat in our homes. We want to feel safe in our homes, it’s unacceptable. It’s been 10 years of the same problem, they know what’s going on, they know it’s a problem and they refuse to fix it. [...] We’ve all be reaching out to Oncor as much as we can to kind of bombard them and get them to take this seriously. This is very, very annoying and it’s very frustrating."
Despite having issues with their power, residents say they're still having to pay high electric bills.
"It’s frustrating because our bills are very high in this neighborhood, our electricity bill sometimes they're anywhere from $600-$900 a month and that’s for unreliable power so I don’t understand what we’re paying for if they can’t give us reliable power," said Hinman.
For Jen Hinman and the neighbors in Free Land, they simply want this problem to be fixed.
"I think what the neighborhood would like is for Oncor to take this seriously," she said. "Heat is a basic necessity. We should be able to have reliable heat for our homes and our families and I think you just need to be responsible and professional and we’re paying our bills, give us reliable heat please."
If anyone is experiencing a power outage you can go to oncor.com and click on 'Report power outage'. Oncor says they should have someone check the situation out that same day. You can also call 888-313-4747 or text 'OUT' to 66267.