My fellow members,
I am happy to report that today is the day. By the end of work today, we believe we should have service restored to all of our meters that can receive service. The exceptions are those few accounts needing repairs before we can restore service. If you have received those repairs and are ready for us to connect service, please email customerservice@colquittemc.com with the name on your account and service address.
As of noon, we had approximately 13 meters in Berrien County and approximately 130 meters in Lowndes County yet to receive service. All construction crew personnel are currently still at Colquitt EMC, but we will begin releasing some of the construction crews today and plan to release the remaining crews tomorrow morning.
Experiencing an outage of this magnitude is a challenge for any utility, but it is especially a challenge for the members who are affected. We have stated previously that meteorologists, local government, emergency services, as well as utilities, like Colquitt EMC, have said that Hurricane Helene has been the most devastating storm to impact our region. I would ask that we take this moment to say a prayer for all the individuals who are affected by Hurricane Helene – especially those who have lost their homes, businesses, or loved ones. We pray for speedy recovery and God’s healing.
After large outage events, we always take time to reflect and discuss areas in which we could improve. Our sole purpose in being formed in 1936 was to provide electric service for the rural areas of our 7 South Georgia counties. We take that purpose to heart and continually strive to meet or exceed the expectations of our members. At the end of the day, it is our members who can decide if we have met those expectations. I can honestly state that our entire workforce has worked diligently to see this day arrive. 16 days of 16-hour shifts is a challenge. This demonstrates the work ethic and the commitment of my fellow employees. On behalf of the board of directors and myself, I say a big thank you to all of our employees, and a big thank you to our membership for your patience during this difficult time. We have almost made it to completion and I am pleased that we have had no serious incidents involving our employees or contract personnel. Going forward, we recognize that there is still work to be done. Some adjustments need to be made to our system. There is a significant amount of damaged material that must be cleaned up. If you have damaged material on your property, please leave it for us to pick up over the next several days. We plan to reopen all offices on Monday morning. We will provide information regarding bill payments and late fees very soon. We recognize the effect this storm has had upon our membership and we fully intend on working with you as we try to return to some sense of normalcy. Finally, and this is heartfelt, I truly appreciate your patience and your prayers as we navigated this outage restoration. Thank you and God bless.
Sincerely,
Danny Nichols
President/CEO