Electric Membership Cooperatives (EMCs) Make More Progress Overnight

TUCKER, Ga., Feb. 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- In the overnight hours, EMC crews restored service to another 9,000 customers in northeast Georgia, an area which experienced severe damage following a winter storm that produced thick layers of ice which coated trees and power lines.

As of 5 a.m., 22,000 customers remain without power in areas hardest hit. EMC representatives estimate that the majority of customers will be restored by midnight. Some outages will take longer due to the extent of damage and because they are located in isolated areas. In addition, at this stage of restoration, each repair may affect only a handful of customers.

To aid in the rate of restoration, hundreds of local EMC crews, EMC line workers from other parts of the state, private contract crews, additional right-of-way crews, and crews from Virginia, Alabama and Florida have been working in the damaged areas.

Restoration has been especially difficult as many areas have been impassable due to trees and other debris in roadways and on electric lines, limiting the crews' access to damaged areas. Also, the rate at which service is restored varies based upon the level of difficulty of each repair and other factors such as extent of damage and location of the outage.

Damage has been most severe in Forsyth, Hall, Gwinnett, Lumpkin, Dawson, Cherokee, Jackson, Banks, Barrow, Habersham and White counties. The public should be especially careful of areas where line trucks and utility vehicles are working and stay clear of roadways.

Georgia EMC is the statewide trade association representing the state's 41 EMCs, Oglethorpe Power Corp., Georgia Transmission Corp. and Georgia System Operations Corp.  Collectively, Georgia's customer-owned EMCs provide electricity and related services to 4.4 million people, half of Georgia's population, across 73 percent of the state's land area.

SOURCE Georgia EMC

Related Links

http://www.georgiaemc.com

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