Blue Ridge Energy Restores All Outages Caused by Florence

LENOIR, NC (September 17, 2018) — At approximately 4:00 p.m., Blue Ridge Energy line technicians and assisting crews restored all power outages resulting from the remnants of Florence.

While scattered outages began in the service area on Saturday, most outages occurred at the height of the storm on Sunday. A majority of the outages resulted from trees falling on power lines from outside of the right-of-way. Line technicians worked throughout the storm to clear the fallen trees, assess damage and make repairs to the 133 damaged locations.

At the height of the storm on Sunday evening, 3,074 members were impacted by outages. Among the fallen trees, line technicians also faced flooded roadways, restricting access to some areas. In Ashe County, a few outages were directly impacted by sections of the New River exceeding its banks. On Monday morning, line technicians worked around rising waters to make repairs at locations impacted by the flooding at the New River.

Blue Ridge Energy thanks all line technicians and personnel who worked to restore power to the 8,298 members affected by the storm. Blue Ridge Energy also expresses gratitude to our sister cooperative, South Alabama Electric Cooperative, and contractors Sumter Utilities and Carter Utility Tree Service.

Any time an outage occurs, members are advised to report it in one of the following ways to ensure they’re recorded in the Blue Ridge Energy tracking system:

• Call PowerLine: 1-800-448-2383

• Use the Blue Ridge mobile app, available free in app stores

For more information on storm and outage preparedness, as well as to view the cooperative’s online outage map, visit www.BlueRidgeEnergy.com.  Also find Blue Ridge Energy on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The electric cooperative serves some 76,000 members in Caldwell, Watauga, Ashe, and Alleghany counties as well as parts of Avery, Alexander and Wilkes counties. Learn more at www.BlueRidgeEnergy.com.