By Jesse Wood
Jan. 19, 2012. Up to 200 lineman from Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation and other utilities have been working around the clock to bring power back to BREMCO customers after a snowstorm dumped inches of heavy, wet snow on to power lines.
“Linemen worked last night and are out in full force today to get power to 1,435 members still affected by Thursday night’s snow storm–and days of heavy rain that brought down trees on power lines,” reads a BREMCO Saturday morning Facebook post that was written at about 8:30 a.m.
At its peak outage, more than 10 percent of the 73,000 BREMCO customers were without power for some time. Most heavily affected regions were Ashe and Alleghany, where more 20 percent of those BREMCO residents lost power.
In Ashe County, for example, the electric system was damaged in more than 400 locations. More than 5,300 Ashe BREMCO residents lost power on Thursday night. As of 9 a.m. on Saturday, more than 1,400 of those folks are still without power. The number of those without power in Alleghany has been reduced to 11.
Roughly 400 BREMCO customers in Watauga lost power, and as of Saturday morning only one still doesn’t have power.
According to a BREMCO outage map on its website, the oldest power outage from Thursday’s storm is now almost 40-hours old.
Less than 2 percent of BREMCO customers – a little more than 1,400 – are still without power.
Rutherford EMC, Union Power, French Broad EMC, York Electric, Haywood EMC, EnergyUnited, and utility contract crews from Sumter, Pike and Carter have been assisting BREMCO.
In a press release, “Blue Ridge Electric warns the public that downed power lines can still be energized and therefore dangerous or even deadly! Stay far away from downed power lines and report them immediately to the cooperative.”
Click here to see a map of the current outages http://bremco.maps.sienatech.com.
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