The City of Lubbock plans to pay more than $60,000 in claims related to the July 23 power outage, according to documents obtained by KAMC Investigates on Thursday.
Nearly half of Lubbock lost power for a second time on July 23 when LP&L crews took a substation offline to repair damaged equipment. That caused the power grid to become overloaded, which sparked another brownout just two days after most of the city lost power.
City staff decided the July 23 brownout was caused by human error, which meant claims submitted for damage caused by the outage would be covered.
Buddy Smith was at home that afternoon of July 23 when the outage happened and said he watched the window unit in his living room stop working.
"[It was] just pulsating: boom, boom, boom, just shutting down," he explained Thursday. It was getting probably half the voltage that it needed so I cut it off."
Smith wrote a letter to City officials complaining about the problem. They told him to send in an estimate for the damage and they would add his name and information to a list of people with claims.
That list includes more than five dozen people. The City plans to pay $61,811.70 in claims.
Budd Smith said without that money, he would be unable to buy a new window unit for his home.
"You know, reaching in your pocket for 700 extra dollars, I don't know many people who have 700 dollars in their pocket, do you?" he said.
In order to be eligible to submit a claim, you must live north of 60th Street between Guava and Milwaukee.
Nearly half of Lubbock lost power for a second time on July 23 when LP&L crews took a substation offline to repair damaged equipment. That caused the power grid to become overloaded, which sparked another brownout just two days after most of the city lost power.
City staff decided the July 23 brownout was caused by human error, which meant claims submitted for damage caused by the outage would be covered.
Buddy Smith was at home that afternoon of July 23 when the outage happened and said he watched the window unit in his living room stop working.
"[It was] just pulsating: boom, boom, boom, just shutting down," he explained Thursday. It was getting probably half the voltage that it needed so I cut it off."
Smith wrote a letter to City officials complaining about the problem. They told him to send in an estimate for the damage and they would add his name and information to a list of people with claims.
That list includes more than five dozen people. The City plans to pay $61,811.70 in claims.
Budd Smith said without that money, he would be unable to buy a new window unit for his home.
"You know, reaching in your pocket for 700 extra dollars, I don't know many people who have 700 dollars in their pocket, do you?" he said.
In order to be eligible to submit a claim, you must live north of 60th Street between Guava and Milwaukee.
