Electric Co-op Today

Utility line crews worked through the night, but hundreds of thousands of people across the Deep South remained without electricity April 28, hours after deadly storms ravaged the region. The death toll from six states surpassed 250 and was expected to climb.

Houses and vehicles in Tuscaloosa, Ala., were destroyed by storms and tornadoes on April 27. (Photo By: Associated Press)

“We’ve got about 232,000 members out across the state,” said Fred Braswell, president and CEO of the Alabama Rural Electric Association of Cooperatives. Alabama was the hardest hit of six states, reporting more than 130 dead after tornadoes and dangerous wind storms pummeled the state April 27.

“The outages are spread across 13 northern Alabama cooperatives,” said Mary Tyler Spivey, communications coordinator at the statewide. “Crews are moving in from cooperatives in the southern part of the state and from Florida to assist with restoration.”

In Arkansas, cooperatives had approximately 15,000 outages across the state, said Doug White, vice president of systems services for the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas.

“The multiple rounds of severe weather have caused outages across the cooperatives’ service areas,” said White. “Our crews might have to replace many poles to restore power to a small number of members.”

Similar damage was reported in Mississippi, where 35,000 co-op meters were without service after the storms moved through. The number of outages had been cut to 14,000 by late the next morning, said Ron Stewart, senior vice president of the Electric Power Association of Mississippi.

“In some isolated areas it could be several days before all power is restored,” said Stewart. “We have extensive damage to our delivery system in the form of broken poles and downed power lines.”

Some of the outages in the region were attributed to serious damage to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s transmission system. Eleven high-voltage lines were out of service by late afternoon April 27. TVA had crews working to repair damaged lines in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi.

“The unusually strong storms we’re experiencing have caused damage resulting in power outages,” said Rob Manning, TVA’s executive vice president of power system operations. 

Tags: Lineworkers, Power Outages, Response, Tennessee Valley Authority, Weather