South Carolina’s electric cooperatives are actively restoring power in the wake of Tropical Storm Irma.
When a significant weather event approaches, emergency planners begin securing and prepositioning repair crews and equipment from other states as part of pre-arranged mutual aid agreements with cooperatives across the nation.
More than 300 line workers from cooperatives in Arkansas, Virginia and North Carolina are assisting South Carolina crews, says Todd Carter, vice president of Loss Control and Training for the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, Inc. Carter’s department coordinates assistance for the state’s 20 member-owned electric cooperatives.
The teams coming to assist South Carolina cooperatives include construction and repair crews. A construction crew, which replaces poles and wire, usually consists of a line truck, bucket truck and five workers including crew foreman, equipment operator, two first class linemen and a ground worker. Other repair crews may consist of a bucket truck and two men to repair fallen conductors, remove trees from lines and perform service work on wires and transformers going to homes.
More than 1.3 million South Carolinians in all 46 counties use power provided by member-owned electric cooperatives. Together, the co-ops operate the state’s largest electric power system with 75,000 miles of power lines across 70 percent of the state.
Over the next few days, cooperatives will work closely with the South Carolina Emergency Management Division (SCEMD), the Office of Regulatory Staff and emergency responders in the communities we serve to coordinate our response and ensure a rapid repair-and-recovery process. Co-op members can track the number of outages and the status is repairs via a live map at https://outages.ecsc.org/outages/maps.
To report outages or downed power lines, contact your local cooperative. A directory of contacts is available at http://scliving.coop/storm-center/numbers-to-report-outages_1/
For storm safety tips, visit the South Carolina Living Storm Center or our Facebook page.
Source: The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, Inc.