About 240 members of the Alabama Power family are heading to Texas to assist with storm restoration.

Note to media: these crews are deploying from their individual home crew headquarters across the state; there will be no big roll-out or convoy.

About 185 line personnel, plus support teams including engineers, mechanics and logistics specialists, were expected to leave Friday afternoon for the metro Dallas area to assist Oncor in restoring power to customers. Alabama Power also released about 130 contract personnel so they could move west to help with restoration.

Massive storms with winds topping 90 mph rolled through north Texas Thursday afternoon, leaving more than 285,000 Oncor customers without service. As of Friday morning nearly 185,000 remained without power.

Alabama Power is among several utilities from the South and Midwest who were answering the call to assist Oncor. Alabama Power’s sister companies, Georgia Power, Mississippi Power and Gulf Power were also sending either company or contract personnel.

The same storm moved through north-central Alabama early Friday, causing some outages in the Birmingham area. As of Friday afternoon, the company had restored service to all customers affected by the storm. Company crews heading for Texas were not needed for storm restoration in Alabama.