Crews Made Significant Progress Overnight Restoring Power

Here’s the current outage situation as of 8:00 AM, Wednesday, Sept. 13.

Number Without Power:  approximately 3,800

Main Areas Effected:     Brooks, Moreland, North Fayetteville, Tyrone    

Crews made significant progress restoring power to members overnight. As of 8:00 AM this morning, we are down to 3,761 outages across the Coweta-Fayette EMC system. In addition to EMC line crews, we now have crews from Jefferson Energy in Kentucky, MasTec, TCI, Trees Inc., Tennessee, Carroll EMC, and Pike Electric joining the effort to get as many of our members on as quickly as safely possible.

We expect 90% of our members whose power was affected by the storm to have power today. Once the broken poles have been replaced, repairs to large areas happen much faster. Getting power to the main distribution feeder lines, or lines that carry power to large groups of member in communities or subdivisions, allows us to start working our way through the individual taps and homes that are off. Tap lines are the lines used to deliver power to transformers at individual homes and businesses.

Once those have been repaired, crews move to individual homes who remain without power. This usually means the service line between the transformer and residence may need repair.

Once the restoration efforts move from the main feeder lines, to taps and individual residences, the numbers move slower. Restoring a distribution line to a large subdivision or community might take crews four hours but in the end hundreds of people may come back on in a single moment. They can spend the same four hours working on an individual tap or line and only get one account restored. Each member is important to the EMC; however, in mass outage situations, we try and get the most on as quickly and safely as possible.

Wires remain down across the system. Always remember to stay far away from downed power lines. Even though you may think the line is deenergized, there’s a chance power could still be flowing through it. Please call us at 770-502-0226 or call 911 and keep others away until help arrives.

You can monitor our restoration efforts by viewing the outage map located under the Storm Center on our website (www.utility.org). We will continue posting updates on our website, Facebook and Twitter.