My fellow members,
We are on Day 9 of our Hurricane Helene Restoration Effort. As we have said previously, at the peak Colquitt EMC had over 67,000 of our 73,000 meters without service. I am happy to report that we have approximately 18,000 meters without service as of this morning. From my perspective, the efforts to restore service have been successful. I recognize that if you are currently one of the members without service, then you may not see success at all. I believe the numbers we have restored and the fact that we have been able to do this amount of work without incident or harm to employees, contractors, or the public is a success. As many of you are aware Helene brought tragedy along her path. I consider us very fortunate to be where we are without incident.
Colquitt EMC has a seven-county territory. Essentially, we have completed all restoration and are performing clean-up in Worth, Tift, and Colquitt counties. In Brooks and Cook counties, our number of outages is below 500. We are quickly approaching having service restored to those two counties. Due to Helene’s path over the eastern third of our service territory, our hardest-hit areas are Berrien and Lowndes. I anticipate by Monday morning; most of our crews will be working in those two counties.
As of today, we currently have 7 construction crews in Brooks County, 14 in Cook County, 24 in Berrien County, and 62 in Lowndes County. We have 15 additional crews coming to work tomorrow morning and they will be split between Berrien and Lowndes counties. As a reminder, these are construction crews only. We have an additional 300 plus right-of-way personnel throughout the affected area. The total of all that manpower is roughly 1,000 individuals. All these individuals plus Colquitt EMC’s employees continue to work diligently to restore service to all our members. We have made it clear that there is no set limit on the amount of personnel that we utilize. We are sparing no cost in this restoration effort.
Allow me to provide you with some information on how we stay prepared for storms like Helene. We do many things that are important for us to restore service. We want to reserve additional manpower. We want to ensure all our equipment is in good working order. We want to make sure we have plenty of diesel and unleaded fuel for all our vehicles. That list can go on and on. However, one of the most important aspects of our preparation is having enough material on hand to restore service. Many utilities will operate with a minimal amount of inventory. They believe this saves them money in the long run. This approach, while possibly saving money, requires you to obtain all the material needed to restore service at the time of the storm. We at Colquitt EMC view inventory quite differently. It is with the intention that we maintain a large, well-stocked inventory of materials always. We believe that positions us in the best possible way to restore service after something like Helene has occurred. Imagine having to wait for material to be shipped to us during a hurricane and depending on that shipment to arrive to restore service to our members. We prefer having significant inventory in our warehouses to meet our needs. Also, we have three warehouses – one in each district. This makes the material easily accessible for our personnel.
As a member of Colquitt EMC, I understand the frustration if you are still without power. I can assure you that all employees of Colquitt EMC and all contractors are working just as hard as we can to restore service. We must be organized, and we must perform the work safely. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Be encouraged. We thank you for your continued patience and prayers.
Sincerely,
Danny Nichols
President/CEO