HURRICANE MICHAEL

Updated October 13, 2018, 10:00pm

We continue to make progress in our efforts to restore power interruptions due to Hurricane Michael.

As of tonight we have restored power to approximately 80% of the customers in the city of Cordele. In Southeast substation we have 3 of the 4 circuits re-energized. In Southwest substation we also have 3 of the 4 circuits energized. We also got circuit 1170 out of Cordele sub energized which restored power to the northern part of the city and the other 3 circuits out of Cordele sub which serve the rest of the downtown area.

We have energized most of Drayton Rd, Farmers Market Rd, Tremont Rd, Cemetery Rd, Highway 41 South and Highway 280 east.

We have restored power down Highway 90 to Hawpond Rd and along Hawpond Rd to just past Arabi Gin. We have also restored significant portions of Old Hatley Rd and Hatley Rd.

On all of these locations I mentioned we have the main lines and most of the taps energized but there are taps and numerous isolated customers still off in all these areas to which we will have to return after the main lines are repaired. This will take several days after all the main lines are completed. These customers are understandably upset when their neighbors have power but we continue to concentrate our efforts on main 3-phase lines to restore power to large blocks of customers. We will come back as soon as we can and get everyone restored and we hope our customers understand.

We still don’t have the A line serving Raines Substation and Highway 33 substation energized but we hope to do so by noon tomorrow. The Generating Plant has not had power since the event began. As a consequence they are unable to generate and we have a floodgate open to pass the water coming down the river. We are about to start slowly raising the Lake back to normal levels. The Plant does have phones again so they can assist in answering customer calls especially at night.

The western third of the county has had very little restoration work performed to date because without the substations to provide power we could not restore service. We have concentrated our efforts on those areas where substation power was available and customers could be re-energized.

In addition to the outside labor we already have working now, we expect more crews to arrive tomorrow consisting of 13 trucks and 37 linemen.

Including the crews already on hand this gives us a total outside resource addition of 32 trucks and 60 linemen to supplement the efforts of the Crisp County Power Commission line crews who have been working on the storm since it began.

The plan is to place the new crews and equipment arriving tomorrow to work in the area around Raines Station, Highway 280 west, Highway 300 and the Lake Blackshear area. We hope to make significant progress over the next few days. We realize our customers have suffered from lack of power through this event on top of all their personal damage but we will work until all power is restored as soon as possible.