Our crews continued to make progress late yesterday, and as of this morning we have 710 outages in 32 locations. The majority of the outages are in eastern Gilmer County in the Tickanetley, Bucktown, East New Hope, and Double Head Gap area. Other outages are scattered across the remainder of the county, with the biggest damage in the New Hope Club Road and Craigtown areas. There is one broken service pole in Pickens County, and one outage in Lumpkin County. As of now, we are only aware of one area that be cannot accessed due to the road being washed out, which is Nugget Lane in western Gilmer County. Once repairs are made to the road to give us access, we can change the broken poles there and restore service.
We still have 200 sets of boots on the ground working to restore power. Our hope is all power will be restored by the end of today, however in an outage of this magnitude it will likely be late as we know of more broken poles in the affected areas. This gets to be more dangerous for the crews, as they are working in smaller areas and close proximity to each other. Safety is our first concern, but repairs will continue to be made as quickly as is safely possible.
Please remember to stay away from any downed power lines. Always assume they are energized. And once again, thank you for your patience and support!