NEWBERRY — With Hurricane Florence bringing heavy wind, the chances of residents in Newberry County losing power is greatly increased. To ensure that customers do not lose power for long, crews with the Newberry Electric Cooperative and the Utilities Department with the City of Newberry will be working around the clock.
Debra Shaw, vice president of Member and Public Relations at the Coop, said they prepared for the storm by ordering extra supplies.
“You never know how many poles may need to be replaced, transformers and things like that, ramped up our equipment. Outside crews are on stand by to come in and help if the need arises, we are planning every aspect of it,” she said. “We are planning for the worst, but hoping for the very best.”
Shaw added that every Coop across the state has crews on stand by, waiting to come in and help.
“We just don’t know, could be devastating, could not be bad at all,” she said.
For the City Utility Department, Tim Baker, utility director, said their staff have been meeting to discuss readiness.
“We have prepared staff to come in during the case of an emergency, if needed and plan to staff a call-center depending upon the number of outages in the city. Before the storm we have made sure that all of our equipment was fueled, and all batteries were charged. Generators have been checked and saws have been sharpened. Our utility warehouse was checked to ensure that it was properly stocked and we have compiled a list of vendor emergency contact numbers should they be needed,” he said. “Our regular contract crews will be staying throughout the weekend should there be a need. A drive-thru of our utility system was done to look for hazards such as tree limbs or trees that may cause potential issues with wind or rain.”
Similarly, the Coop will have crews on the ground as early as Friday night, helping with repair.
“Anything above 35 mile an hour wind causes major problems for the Coop, heavy rain makes it worse. The ground gets soft because of all the rain, then all of this wind, because that soft ground, trees fall over,” Shaw said. “It is a devastating situation if we have high wind.”
Depending on the damage, and the strength of the storm, there may be scenarios where power is out for two or three days, but it also may not take that long.
“If a huge major line is taken out, we have to rebuild that line before even thinking about getting the power back on, it just depends on what the scenario is,” Shaw said. “Rest assured, if we have an area that is heavily damaged, we will have 12 hour shifts (inside employees), and we will go 24 hours. Our outside employees will go 16 hours on, and eight hours off, on a rotation schedule so someone is working all the time.”
For the City, Baker said many places in their electrical system can be isolated and sectionalized, which allow them to back-feed circuits from different directions to get as many of their customers back on as possible.
“However, if a customer is close to the source of the outage, they may see an extended period without power depending on the hazard. We do have a restoration plan and critical infrastructure will be addressed as a priority,” he said. “City utility meters are ‘smart meters’ and in most cases before a customer calls in an outage, our staff has already been notified that there is an outage, large or small. However, if a customer is without power, we do encourage them to let us know, but to keep patience in mind as staff could be fielding a large amount of calls.”
These crews have the possibility of working in hazardous conditions during this storm. Shaw said the major issue will be flooding.
“Anytime you have flooding, that poses even more of a risk for lineman, power and water don’t mix. We have sessions before, to be safe and to make sure they take their time, that is the thing about it, we know people want their power back on, but safety is obviously a priority,” Shaw said.
Baker echoed the fact that safety is a top priority.
“We’ve made sure that everyone has received the proper personal protective equipment and made sure they all have communication devices where they can communicate during a restoration process if needed. We plan to work somewhat in shifts so that employees are not overworked and can get rest,” he said.
If a customer of the Coop loses power during the storm, or sees damage that they think the Coop should know about, Shaw said to call their Customer Service number at 803-276-1121. For City of Newberry customers, Baker said call their emergency after-hours number 803-276-0311.
“Should this number get inundated with calls, we have a plan to reroute those numbers to additional staff who can help field calls. Something important to keep in mind is if you see a downed power line, treat it like it’s energized, especially if you do not know what it is. Please do not touch it, but instead call us to let us know,” he said.