By WECT Staff | August 3, 2020 at 9:18 PM EDT – Updated August 4 at 1:59 AM
SOUTHEASTERN N.C. (WECT) – Power is out for more than 150,000 residents across the Cape Fear region after Hurricane Isaias made landfall in Ocean Isle Beach late Monday night into the early Tuesday morning hours.
Now, the question everyone is asking, when will it be restored?
With more than 170,000 customers (and counting) without power from three different electric providers, it could take some time for all power to be restored to all customers.
Duke Energy has more than 2,200 workers ready to work on restoring power with many of them coming from other states specifically to respond to Isaias.
“More than 300 Duke Energy workers traveled from the company’s Midwest service territory – Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky – and an additional 300 workers will travel from Florida tomorrow to supplement Carolina-based crews in power restoration, if needed,” according to Duke Energy.
So how does the power provider go about restoring power? Well, it comes down to casting the biggest net to get power back to the most customers first, along with public health facilities.
“Duke Energy focuses on restoring power in a sequence that enables power restoration to public health and safety facilities and to the greatest number of customers as safely and quickly as possible. Click here for information on how Duke Energy restores power,” according to the company.
Customers can sign up for outage alerts to stay informed on the status of outages, visit the Duke Energy outage map, and to report an outage, customers can text OUT to 57801 or call 800-419-6356.
As the storm moves out restoration crews can move in and start working and Duke Energy will provide updates to give estimated times of restoration for customers.
“Updates on the estimated times of restoration may be delayed until the storm clears the area. You will see this reflected on some areas of the map as “awaiting Isaias impacts”. Once conditions safely allow, our crews will begin assessing damage and making repairs. We will continue to provide updates both on the map and via our Outage Alerts as we progress,” according to the company’s latest update.
- Duke Energy reported that more than 73,000 New Hanover County customers, more than 11,000 in Pender County, 10,000 in Brunswick County, more than 4,000 in Columbus County and more than 5,000 in Bladen County were without power.
- Four County Electric Membership Corporation reported more than 5,000 customers in Pender County.
- Brunswick Electric Membership reported more than 31,000 customers without power in Brunswick County and about 1,000 customers in Columbus County.
11:45 pm – The roughest part of the storm has arrived in our territory. We now have around 1,500 people without power…
Posted by Four County Electric Membership Corporation on Monday, August 3, 2020
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