Rural electric co-ops are working feverishly to restore power. At the height of the storm, there were 87-thousand, 500 customers without power. That number is now down to about 57-hundred. One of the hardest hit rural communities is Oologah in Rogers County.

Nine days without power and Brian Cooper has learned to adjust, thinking instead of what he can do, not what he can't. Call him 'Mr. Understanding'.

"You've got to be. It's just so widespread and there's so many. Even though they have a lot of people in here working on this, there's still just so much damage."

Crews from as far away as Tennessee are in Oologah, where more than 15-hundred utility poles are down, snapped from the weight of the ice on power lines.

"We're just hoping to get it turned on real soon," Cooper says.

Verdigris Valley Electric Cooperative also serves customers in Skiatook, Sand Springs, Prue, Owasso and Sperry, which lost power to its substations when lines from the Grand River Dam Authority went down.

For some customers, almost a week without power has brought VVEC a lot of angry phone calls. They want customers to know they are doing the best they can.

"You get a lot of busy signals and we don't have our phones off the hook, we're manning the phones 24 hours a day," says Randy Riddle. 

So, for customers like Brian...

"I know they're working on it, so as long as we can see them out there working, we're okay. Even if it's another few days."

Four hundred and 25 crews are working throughout the Verdigris Valley service area.

"We've got a lot of crews in and they're not in any means wanting to leave before Christmas," Riddle says. "They said they will stick with us as long as it takes to get them all up."