Duke Energy crews continue to focus on Carolinas' hardest-hit regions; power restored to nearly 1.5 million customers

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Sept. 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Energy crews today continued making progress in restoring power to North Carolina and South Carolina customers impacted by Hurricane Florence, particularly in hard-hit coastal and inland counties.

Crews have restored power to nearly 1.5 million customers out of nearly 1.7 million customers who experienced an outage during the storm.

As of 8:30 p.m., 153,000 customers – most of them in North Carolina – remained without power. The latest outage numbers can be found here.

Many of the remaining impacted customers are located in coastal and inland areas that experienced historic flooding, multiple road closures and significant structural damage – making power restoration unusually challenging and time-consuming.

Duke Energy continues to move additional repair crews into those hard-hit areas. The company also has deployed special equipment specifically designed for use in restoring power in heavily flooded regions.

"Duke Energy has thousands of powerline technicians and other personnel working to safely restore power as quickly as possible in extremely difficult conditions," said Duke Energy incident commander Howard Fowler. "We greatly appreciate our customers' ongoing patience during what is understandably a highly stressful time for dozens and dozens of our impacted communities."

Estimated restoration times

Duke Energy expects to restore power to most North Carolina and South Carolina customers by Sept. 26 at 11:45 p.m. – but the vast majority will be restored sooner.

See the latest map for estimated power restoration times, by geographical area.

Duke Energy will send customers – via text message – additional information, including updated restoration times, when available.

Local updates from company communicators

Duke Energy communicators in the field are posting the latest local information about power restoration and related activities in communities most severely impacted by the storm at Hurricane Florence Journal: Reports from the field – and on Twitter:

Jeff Brooks – https://twitter.com/DE_JeffB -- "Trucks rolled through the supply yard picking up transformers, power lines and poles to rebuild the infrastructure that Hurricane Florence destroyed. Duke Energy estimates that crews will need to replace 500 miles of powerlines, 2,600 transformers and 4,400 power poles."

Grace Rountree – https://twitter.com/DE_GraceR – "Road closures, especially the closure of I-95, made travel difficult. We were rerouted several times in order to reach impacted communities. Portions of roadways and bridges were completely destroyed and our crews had to work around these damaged areas. ATVs, off-road vehicles and other special equipment helped crews gain access to local areas needing repairs."

Ana Gibbs – https://twitter.com/DE_AnaGibbs – "Some of our crew leads left at 6 a.m. and headed to the Duke Energy operations center in Marion the next county over. They poured over maps to overcome the challenge they again face today to find safe roadways to access areas isolated by flooding."

Chris Rimel – https://twitter.com/ChrisRimel – "As the Duke Energy team assessed damage to a transmission line using drones launched from a boat ramp, they saw the horses floundering in deep floodwaters and their owners trying to walk them to higher ground without success."

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SOURCE Duke Energy

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