In early July, STEC and our Members faced yet another hurricane: Hurricane Beryl. Fortunately, the storm weakened from its peak as an impressive Category 5 storm that wreaked havoc on Grenada and Jamaica before hitting our Members’ service territory as a Category 1 hurricane, leaving thousands of members in Jackson, Wharton, San Bernard and Victoria’s service areas without power, water, or communication. Some of our facilities were damaged, and some of our employees and their families were affected by the storm as well.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, we quickly and decisively jumped into action as soon as it was safe to do so and were able to restore power to 12 of 15 affected substations on the same day the hurricane made landfall. The next day we successfully energized two more stations, and the last substation was energized one day later. Despite the enormous challenges and obstacles we faced, we came together and achieved a tremendous amount of work to ensure that our Members could take power as soon as they were ready.

While four of our Members were impacted, Jackson Electric Coop. and Wharton County Electric Coop. were hit particularly hard by Hurricane Beryl, and they needed our help and the help of STEC’s other Members to rebuild their systems and restore service to their communities. As a generation and transmission cooperative, we have a responsibility to support our distribution members, who serve the end-use consumers. We did not hesitate to lend a hand, and we sent our own crews, equipment, and supplies to help them in their time of need. The work accomplished by this collective group of cooperatives in restoring power to homes and business was nothing less than remarkable and is a testament to the spirit of cooperatives. We live and work in the communities we serve and our commitment to those communities drives us to accomplish the unthinkable.

I am immensely proud of the work that we have done, and I want to thank each and every one of you for your dedication, professionalism, and resilience. You have demonstrated the core values of our cooperative and it is recognized. You have also shown the importance of two of our seven cooperative principles: cooperation among cooperatives and concern for community. We are stronger together, and we can overcome any challenge when we work as a team.

As we continue to recover from the impacts of Hurricane Beryl, I urge you to stay safe, healthy, and hopeful. I also encourage you to reach out to those in need of help recovering, and offer them any support or assistance they may need. We are not only a cooperative, we are a family, and we are here for each other. May God bless each of you.