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Blue Ridge Electric Linemen Continue Responding to Outages; Ice Brings Down Trees on Power Lines

Update: as of 4:55 p.m., only 174 members in Watauga County are still without power.

BremcoFeb. 26, 2013. Linemen with Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation worked throughout today restoring power after icy weather led to trees falling on power lines and tearing down spans of line primarily in Caldwell and Watauga counties although outages occurred all across the cooperative’s service area. 

As of 4:30 p.m., outages are down to 1,290 with the majority in the higher elevations of Watauga County where temperatures haven’t risen above freezing. Outages began this morning at 6 a.m., starting in Caldwell County where temperatures were below freezing until mid-day. A total of 5,000 Blue Ridge Electric members were affected at different periods throughout the day.

Tonight’s weather reports are calling for wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour in the Blue Ridge Electric service area.  Line technicians, member service representatives and other employees are ready to respond to member needs should outages continue.

Blue Ridge Electric encourages members to keep the cooperative’s PowerLine outage reporting number handy in case outages occur: 1-800-448-2383.

To check outage status at any time, visit Blue Ridge Electric’s online outage map at www.BlueRidgeEMC.com, where news releases and safety tips can also be found. Updates are also available on the cooperative’s social media sites at: www.facebook.com/blueridgeemc and www.twitter.com/blueridgeemc.  

Blue Ridge Electric serves some 74,000 members in Caldwell, Watauga, Ashe, Alleghany, Wilkes, Avery and Alexander counties.