Residents of Bishop and Kingsville were for the most part spared by a series of two strong storm systems, one in Laredo and one in San Antonio, which converged on the Coastal Bend late Wednesday night.

According to National Weather Service reports, peak winds gusts of 48 mph blew into Kingsville around 11 p.m. Wednesday evening along with rainfall of .52 inches.

Areas in and around Corpus Christi received the brunt of the bad weather, which left a reported 40,000 customers without power and several homes damaged due to the hurricane force winds of up to 79 mph.

AEP Texas, which serves 11,617 customers in Kingsville, only had a handful of reported outages and power was back up early Thursday.

The high wind gusts were believed to play a role in a local business, the Texas Ranch Club located at 406 N. 6th Street, having three power lines come down behind the establishment, which caused the power to flow from the ground into the building and the breaker box to spark and catch on fire.

No customers were inside the establishment at the time of the incident.

“I called AEP Texas around 11 p m. when the lines went down and because of all of their other calls they told me they would be out there by 2 a.m.,” Leo Saenz, owner of the business said. “I then called the Kingsville Fire Department and they came out right away to secure the lines since they were just loose on the ground.”

Saenz said that AEP Texas crews did not arrive until 5 a.m. Thursday morning to assess the damage and they found that the trees around the power lines to be a fault for incident and trimmed the trees accordingly.

“They put the same three, burnt, crispy lines back up and left,” Saenz said. “I don’t know if they are planning to come back and change the lines but it would make the most sense because having the same burnt lines up there seems like a hazard to me.”

The building’s structure itself did not have any damage however the breaker box in the inside of the building was burnt and electrical wires throughout the building were fried and crispy, even though some were not plugged in at the time of the storm.

Saenz said the establishment will be closed for the next two weeks and he now has to cancel several upcoming events and concerts scheduled at the club and it will be a major loss in income.

“We were supposed to have a concert this weekend, one next week, and a benefit teen dance Sunday which have now been cancelled until we can get power back on,” Saenz said.

The Kingsville Fire Marshall and inspectors were at the site Thursday morning canvassing the damage so that electricians can repair the power lines quickly and the city can issue the establishment a permit, which will be needed for AEP Texas to turn the electricity back on.

“Hopefully the process will go by quickly so we can get back up and running, the process is usually slow so we are hoping for the best,” Saenz said. “This is the first time anything like this has happened here.”