Restoring power to rural areas after hurricane Helene to take weeks, utilities say
Source: Reuters
October 1, 2024 6:28 PM EDT Updated 11 hours ago
Oct 1 (Reuters) - Restoring power to parts of the rural United States could take several weeks after Hurricane Helene's high winds and flooding decimated stretches of the southeast electrical grid, utility officials said on Tuesday.
Helene, which barreled north after making landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, ripped away thousands of miles of transmission lines and power poles in hard-to-reach parts of the country, members of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association said on a call.
"I've been in this business for 38 years, and I've never seen anything like it," said Dennis Chastain, CEO of Georgia Electric Membership Corp. "It is devastation that's hard to describe."
Local electric cooperatives, which are owned by their customers, cover more than half of the country's landscape. Georgia's transmission provider for the state's electric co-ops had 166 distribution stations out during the peak of the storm. In South Carolina, Helene wiped out at least 2,000 power poles, said Michael Couick, who heads that state's association of co-ops.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/restoring-power-parts-rural-us-after-storm-will-take-weeks-utilities-say-2024-10-01/