Grass Fire Blamed for Power Outage

LONGVIEW — High winds are being blamed for a 5-acre Gregg County grass fire and an outage that left more than 4,200 county residents without electricity Thursday afternoon. Firefighters from multiple departments responded to a reported wildfire near Fuller and Huckaby roads, and AEP Southwestern Electric Power Co. officials were called to the Kilgore area to remove a tree that fell on a 69,000-volt transformer, which knocked out power to 4,279 Gregg County residents.

According to KETK, firefighters from Judson Metro, East Mountain and Longview departments and the Texas Forest Service were called to the grass fire about 1:30. Texas Forest Service Emergency Operation Center Coordinator Don Hannemann said the fire had been contained by 3:15. Longview Fire Marshal Johnny Zackary said his department was called to provide aid to the Judson Metro Volunteer Fire Department because there were three homes in danger.