By Lorrie Ross
Staff Writer
While many areas around the southeast are still without power from Hurricane Helene, Clay County and some of its immediate neighbors have had their power restored. Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corporation had outages throughout the region, according to Kelly Crawford, manager of media and communications for BRMEMC. There were 166 total outages, which affected 11,668 members in the five counties covered by BRMEMC.
"We experienced outages throughout our entire service territory," she said. "Some of the larger outages occurred in Towns, Union and Fannin counties. The main cause was fallen trees from overly saturated soil and wind played a part in it, too. There was a total of 14 broken poles throughout our system. Power restoration was primarily completed by 12 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28."
After getting the work done at home, four crews with a total of 16 men, left on Monday, Sept. 30 to assist Altahama EMC. Crawford said that EMC is in Lyons, Ga. where most of the infrastructure was lost. For a while, all of their electric meters were without power, Crawford said.
As another service to the communities, BRMEMC has added Wi-Fi hot-spots to the region.
"On Sunday, Sept. 29 we activated Wi-Fi hot-spots throughout Clay and Cherokee counties to assist our communities during the downed cellular service," Crawford said. "Those are still active and free to use."