There were 1.2 million customers without power due to conditions caused by Hurricane Matthew, according to a conference call meeting with Duke Energy on Monday afternoon. David Fountain, North Carolina President, Duke Energy and Bobby Simpson, Duke Energy Storm Director, reported currently there are about 435,000 still without power in North and South Carolina.
Significant flooding, road access issues, broken poles, and safely performing work on substations and distribution stations, are the causes of the longer outage times. Fountain from Duke said with the company’s resources there are over 7,000 people working in the fields to restore services Monday, Oct. 10, and additional 7,000 will start working on the projects for Duke Energy on Tuesday, Oct. 11 with full power of resources to be at work on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
The company representatives said the estimated time of restorations at this point, worse case scenario, is for Sunday, Oct. 16. The power company’s damage surveyed thus far has a report of more than 800 poles down, thousands of strands of wire, 57 transmission lines down and some substations are flooded.
The two representatives stress keeping safety first. “Assume all down lines are energized and stay away from them,” said Simpson. “Be extremely careful when moving around in damaged area,” he continued.
Some customers may have damage to their homes preventing the power company to make repairs until the owners make the repairs to their homes according Duke’s officals. For real time updates check the outage map on Duke’s website: http://outagemap.duke-energy.com/ncsc/default.html
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