EMCs Enter Latter Stages Of Power Restoration

Tucker, Ga. — As of 5:30 a.m., EMCs in Georgia have made steady progress in the battle to restore power to nearly 400,000 members following Tropical Storm Zeta. At this time, 22,000 members in metro Atlanta, north and northeast Georgia remain without power, and EMCs are directing a massive restoration effort involving hundreds of additional workers from Georgia, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee.

EMCs have been working in tough conditions to remove hundreds of enormous trees and other debris from roadways and power lines before they can begin the restoration process. They are completely replacing spans of downed power lines, thousands of destroyed power poles, transformers and other equipment.

This storm in particular has posed a number of challenges for EMC crews:

• Outages are spread across EMC service areas rather than concentrated in a particular spot within their system.
• The number of destroyed power poles is unprecedented for many EMCs--a massive undertaking since it takes an average of four hours to replace just one power pole.
• Some are working in remote parts of their systems in isolated locations over steep and rough terrain.

Local crews, along with crews from the states mentioned above, will continue work throughout the day and night with the goal of restoring service to the majority of remaining customers.

For specific information on local EMC efforts, members should visit their EMC’s website or follow progress on their EMC’s social media pages.

Note to media: Outage information is available and updated every 15 minutes at www.georgiaemc.com/outages.

Georgia EMC is the statewide trade association representing the state’s 41 EMCs, Oglethorpe Power Corp., Georgia Transmission Corp. and Georgia System Operations Corp. Collectively, Georgia’s customer-owned EMCs provide electricity and related services to 4.4 million people, nearly half of Georgia’s population, across 73 percent of the state’s land area. To learn more, visit www.georgiaemc.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.