The Walton EMC Blog

April 5 Outages #3

Here is the latest information as of about 3 p.m. Tuesday, April 5:

About 2,200 customer-owners remain without power. Additional help in the form of equipment and crews have arrived from the City of Monroe and Jackson EMC.

At last count, there are 26 broken poles on our system. Crews are working to replace these poles which sometimes takes several hours, depending on the complexity of the wiring and other factors, like traffic.

Employees are taking advantage of our newly installed automated metering system to check for outages and direct crews to trouble spots in a more efficient manner.

According to a spokesman from Georgia EMC, our statewide trade association, 40 of 42 EMCs are affected by this storm and 15 of those have requested extra help.

Crews are working hard to have most power restored by tonight, but there will probably be isolated cases where electric service will not be restored until tomorrow.

Please check the Storm Center at our website for outage tips.

April 5 Outages #2

 

 Here's one reason why it takes a little longer sometimes to restore your power.

April 5 Outages #1

We're still battling outages caused by last night's severe thunderstorms. At the height of the outages, about 20,000 Walton EMC customer-owners were out of power.

To put the devastation in perspective, there are 15 broken poles across our service territory. Replacing a broken pole is a major undertaking and requires hours to complete.

All our crews are working feverishly but safely to restore power, and have been since the wee hours. We also have help from additional contract crews. Our control center is a beehive of activity.

If you see a downed power line, please stay away!

You can keep up with the latest outage numbers here. If you need to report an outage, please contact us at 770-267-2505 or online at waltonemc.com.

It may be this evening or later before all power is restored.

We should have video and/or photos showing damage shortly.