My fellow members,
Colquitt EMC employees and contractors continue working in extremely difficult conditions to restore power. As a reminder, at the height of the hurricane, Colquitt EMC lost power to approximately 67,000 meters out of our 73,000 meters. As of 9:00 AM this morning, we have approximately 7,400 meters without service. Restoration is pretty much wrapped up in Worth, Tift, Colquitt, and Brooks counties. In the remaining counties, we have the following outages:
Cook – 336
Berrien – 1,642
Lowndes -5,192
I believe we have made very good progress restoring service throughout our service territory, given the working conditions. Many individuals, such as EMA professionals, meteorologists, and those who work in electric utilities have noted that Helene has been one of the more catastrophic events to have affected the Southeastern United States. With this storm, there was a magnitude of trees blown into powerlines and across roadways and a huge number of broken poles. During Idalia, we had approximately 500 broken poles, and that was a record for us at the time. Our current number of broken poles from Helene is 2,762. Outages that involve broken poles, and downed trees increase the time it takes to restore service.
I completely understand the frustration and then insecure feeling from not knowing when service will be restored. I am equally concerned about giving an estimate because I don’t want to give our members incorrect information. Colquitt EMC has over 9,400 miles of line. The different locations and types of damage make giving estimates of restoration a challenge. It truly does. However, once you have been working in the affected areas, we can better estimate restoration.
We believe we will complete restoration in Cook County by the end of today, Berrien County by noon Thursday, and Lowndes County by Sunday morning. My fellow members, once again I recognize the frustration of not having electric service. We have done everything possible at Colquitt EMC to prepare ourselves for Helene, and to restore service to all our members as quickly and safely as possible. We truly wish to provide the best customer service and still maintain reasonable rates. That is our mandate and our goal that is what we aspire to. I greatly appreciate your understanding and your patience, and I again ask you for your continuing prayers for our personnel who are restoring service, but I also ask you to pray for all the people who are affected throughout the southeast by Hurricane Helene.
Sincerely,
Danny Nichols
President/CEO