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The Postal Service’s National Center for Employee Development recently opened its doors to local families and electrical crews in need of a warm place to stay.

“We don’t normally accommodate children under 18 in our postal housing facility,” says Scott Morgan, NCED manager. “Our campus guest rooms are designed for adult postal employees attending courses, with one bed in each room and no connecting doors. But when local hotels were full and referred families without power to us, we were happy to provide a temporary place for people to stay.”

NCED also is housing some electrical crews from out of state.

“Our parking lots are usually pretty full with staff, students and conferees,” Morgan said, “so we don’t normally let big trucks park here. But we relaxed those limits, too, so we could help these crews out.”

As of Thursday, affected families had used nearly 400 room nights at the center. Adding the electrical crews brings total NCED room nights used due to the storm to about 700. Most of the OG&E crews staying at NCED are from Louisiana, Texas and other Southern states that sent crews to help Oklahoma, Morgan said. The OEC crews are mainly Oklahoma employees from outside the metro area who came in to help.

The postal center averages 900 postal employees and conferees a week in its housing facility, and its guest rooms are already overbooked with business guests for 23 weeks during 2008. But postal training is down near the holidays when the Postal Service focuses on delivering more than double the usual amount of mail.