Extra Crews called in to restore Power in the Upstate

Extra crews have been called in to assist Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative with damage caused by road two of thunderstorms. Terry Ballenger, Vice President of Communications at Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative, gives an update on power restoration in the Upstate of South Carolina. “We were just wrapping repairing the storm damage from Sunday’s storm yesterday afternoon when this new storm front came across and almost instantly we had about 4,000 members without power. Of course, our folks had been working themselves almost into exhaustion on the repairs they had been doing so we knew when we got to this morning they were going to be worn out so we called in some additional crews from Georgia and South Carolina. They have all been here this morning helping try to mop up the remaining problems from yesterday’s storm. We did get quit a few members on over night. Right now we have 74 members still out; five in Anderson County; six in Pickens County; and 63 in Oconee County. Most of the trouble that we have in Oconee County is along the state line. We’ve got crews working on that and hope to have them on by early this afternoon. I was looking at some of the weather forecasting and it looks like we might have some more stormy weather this afternoon, so we are going to be watching things. Hopefully we will dodge the bullet this time but if not at least we have some good folks here to help us.” Repair crews have been assigned to all remaining outages. To report an outage to Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative, call 1-888-BLUERIDGE.