Hurricane Helene left a trail of destruction in upstate South Carolina and western North Carolina on Friday morning, leaving over a million customers without power.Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative released the following statement at 5:50 p.m. Saturday:As of 5:30 p.m., an estimated 69 percent of our members (approximately 50,096 in total) remain without service. Approximately 61,600 members were without power at this time yesterday.Power has been restored to over 11,000 members in the last 24 hours as the multi-day restoration and rebuild efforts continue at Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative.Crews will continue to work into the evening and overnight to restore services. To contextualize some of the damage we have assessed in the last 36 hours, we have provided an update on the confirmed number of broken poles in our system.On average, it takes a four-man crew about 3-4 hours to replace one broken pole. We have found 289 broken poles from Tropical Storm Helene, and our engineers estimate this number will grow significantly. Replacing three poles over a 12-hour shift is a full day’s work for a single crew. Replacing four is a feat in these circumstances. These are not simple repairs.Currently, we have 10 substations without transmission service from Duke Energy.The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina released the following statement at 3:45 p.m. Saturday:South Carolina’s electric cooperatives are working around the clock to restore power after Hurricane Helene tore a path of destruction through the Palmetto State Friday morning.As of 3 p.m. Satuday, Sept. 28, approximately 276,000 co-op members remain without power, down from a peak of 425,000 on Friday morning. Most of the remaining outages are concentrated in the western half of the state, and particularly the Upstate, where Helene’s destruction of critical electric infrastructure has surpassed that of even Hurricane Hugo in 1989.Cooperative members in western South Carolina should prepare for outages of at least a week, if not longer, as crews repair and replace a mangled power grid.”This is not a simple restoration job,” said Mike Couick, CEO of The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina. “For many areas, particularly in the Upstate and along the western border of South Carolina, co-ops are essentially rebuilding our electric system from the ground up.”A few stats that illustrate the extent of the damage:At least 1,400 cooperative power poles – and counting – were snapped by the storm and require replacement. For context, it takes about one to four hours, on average, for a crew of four to replace a single pole.Just under half of the cooperative system’s substations across the state – about 80 in total – remain offline due to transmission outages.The cooperatives’ materials supplier, CEEUS, is shipping out 15 tractor trailer loads of equipment and supplies a day – about the same volume of materials as were required in the aftermath of Hugo. Cooperatives are requesting about 10 times as much material as usual for a typical storm restoration effort. The required materials include wood crossarms, overhead transformers, fuses, hot line clamps, and other equipment typically seen on a power pole.Crews from every South Carolina electric cooperative are working in the field, including some who have completed restoration work for their co-ops on the coast and now are helping Upstate co-ops restore power.Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative released the following statement at 3:40 p.m. Saturday:Over 300 Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative crew members and outside aid are actively restoring power after Tropical Storm Helene caused widespread system damage.Multi-day outages remain expected, as nearly 1 million customers throughout the 11-county Upstate region are still without power as of noon today. Our shift change happened before daybreak, and crews have continued to assess and repair our grid after this historic damage. We ask that our members not approach our crews to provide them with the space they need to return service safely. Progress is being made. We will continue to provide updates today.Duke Energy released the following statement at 2:40 p.m. Saturday:As of 1 p.m., about 1.1 million customers remain without power, according to Duke Energy.Workers continue assessing damage, making repairs and rebuilding infrastructure following severe damage caused by Helene.Duke Energy workers have labored through record flooding, road closures, storm debris and more over the past 24 hours to restore power to 723,000 customers in the Carolinas.The company said nearly all customers outside of the western parts of the Carolinas should have power restored by 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday, Sept. 29, though many will be restored before then.Workers continue to…
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