APS ready for another round of storms

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - With the weather picking up, Arizona Public Service is ready to respond to any reports of damage.

This summer's Monsoon season has had an impact on APS, but the company says they are ready for future storms.

APS is calling this summer one of the worst seasons for storms in the past few years. Because of hurricane-like winds, the amount of downed power poles increased 81% from 2014.

"We've lost 485 power poles since June, it's been from five major storms that have just toppled the valley," said Jenna Shaver.

And it's not just these wooden power poles that snapped like toothpicks, APS says some of the steel power poles, 19 inches in diameter also sustained some damage.

Even though either pole can be damaged, Jenna Shaver with APS says steel poles are becoming more popular.

"We take every opportunity to replace that wooden pole with steel. Now you can't do that with every occasion because there are some cases where you need that wood pole so crews can climb it if you can't get to it with a bucket truck, but wherever we can we are replacing wood poles with steel," she said.

But that is not all, APS has employees on standby as the storm nears to make sure if poles go down, they can quickly respond.

"We monitor the weather all the time; we know the storms are rolling in we make sure our crews are ready. We have enough crews on standby; not just our linemen that go out in the field, but also our call center, so that when customers do experience an outage, and they're calling in we want to make sure those calls get answered," said Shaver.

APS also inspects poles prior to storms to make sure they are in good condition; each pole typically lasts 35-40 years. APS has 420,000 poles in the system.