Additional Storm Restoration Crews Arrive at Coastal Electric

Two 6‑men elec­tric line crews from Wal­ton Elec­tric Mem­ber­ship Cor­po­ra­tion (EMC) in Mon­roe, GA and three 6‑men crews from Snap­ping Shoals EMC in Cov­ing­ton, GA are on their way to Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive this morn­ing to help restore pow­er to vic­tims of Hur­ri­cane Matthew.

The crews will assist our Coastal Elec­tric line­men through­out the storm restora­tion peri­od,

Because elec­tric coop­er­a­tives fol­low the same pow­er line con­struc­tion stan­dards, these crews from oth­er co-ops will be able to go right to work when they arrive in Mid­way.  They can work side-by-side with Coastal Elec­tric line­men crews or inde­pen­dent­ly.

“Depend­ing on the extent of the dam­age, we may bring in more replace­ment crews to relieve the ini­tial crews after sev­er­al days.” said Chris Fettes, Coastal’s enginer­ing and oper­a­tions vice pres­i­dent.

Addi­tion­al haz­ards face elec­tric crews after nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.  Fall­en trees can put excess ten­sion on wires and flood­ing can make access to repairs dif­fi­cult.  The ris­ing waters can also dis­place poi­so­nous snakes and make mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tions explode. Many times, crews have to cut a path through downed trees just to reach repair sites.

“There is also the haz­ard from incor­rect use of stand­by gen­er­a­tors,” said  Coastal Electric’s Mark Bolton. “Small gen­er­a­tors can put sev­er­al thou­sand volts back out on pow­er lines if they are not cor­rect­ly installed, pre­sent­ing a haz­ard for line tech­ni­cians or any­one else who may come in con­tact with them.”

If you have a med­ical con­di­tion that requires you to have unin­ter­rupt­ed elec­tric­i­ty Coastal Elec­tric sug­gests you fol­low the evac­u­a­tion rec­om­men­da­tions of your coun­ty emer­gency man­age­ment direc­tor and make plans now to move to a safe loca­tion until pow­er can be restored to your home.

Our pri­or­i­ty is always to restore pow­er to the great­est num­ber of peo­ple in the short­est peri­od of time. We work first to restore the high volt­age trans­mis­sion lines, then sub­sta­tions, fol­lowed by our main feed­er lines then sin­gle phase taps and last­ly, indi­vid­ual ser­vices.

We will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the path and fore­cast of Hur­ri­cane Matthew and adjust our storm response pro­ce­dures accord­ing­ly.

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