Asheville – Bill Norton, spokesperson for Duke Energy, said on October 14 that 8,590 customers in WNC, including 5,283 in Buncombe County, remained without power. He assured that Duke was “making steady progress,” having restored nearly 1.5 million customer outages.
Norton said it will take longer to restore power to facilities unable to receive power. One reason they can’t might be that the roads are inaccessible. Norton added, “The Department of Transportation has been great, coming up with great solutions to get to some areas.” Still, areas formerly accessed only by bridges that are now washed away are going to take longer.
In other places, structures are so damaged that they cannot legally be connected to power lines until inspections and permits for construction are obtained from local governments, most of which are already inundated with their own flood damage as well as their obligations to get infrastructure and services up and moving for their constituents. Norton had no idea if any jurisdictions were going to offer waivers.
To help with power restoration to the locations for which this remains challenging, Duke is opening a dedicated facility in Western North Carolina to serve as a base for operations. This center will host collaborative operations with national, state, and local incident management teams under one roof.
Norton said that customers still without power can consult duke-energy.com/helenerecovery for the latest information about restoration efforts. Duke is also sending out emails, texts, and calls as site-specific operations are competed. Asked how people trapped in inaccessible areas without power were expected to keep their devices charged, Norton said Duke was providing regular updates through radio. “We’re participating in the Buncombe County news conferences at 11 to get the information out,” he said.
For the most part, Duke is aware of where the outages are, but sometimes the transmitting systems are suboptimal, and people won’t see their outages on online maps. In these cases, Norton asks persons without power to find a way to text “out” to 57801.
He said sometimes the system will report a whole neighborhood as being repaired when, in fact, there are nuanced outages that it does not detect. He compares the system logic of Duke’s transmission infrastructure to interstate highways. He said both work in normal storms, but this storm “was past all benchmarks.” There was tremendously more damage to both interstates and the transmission system.
He next compared substations to offramps from the highway. A normal storm will take out a small neighborhood here and there. This storm took out wider areas. Three substations, in fact, were flooded, and Duke has set up temporary, mobile substations in Swannanoa, Biltmore Village, and Hot Springs.
Norton, on behalf of Duke, said he “would like to express appreciation for all the patience, support, and kindness” shown by people still affected by power outages. Duke’s crews, as well as contractors from as far away as Canada, Texas, and the Midwest, are working 16-hour days. He said Duke and the contractors “will remain on the ground until power is restored for everyone.”
Some areas, he said, are slow to rebuild. They had just gotten power back to the town of Hot Springs. People in the outskirts still are without power, but it was “wonderful” to see the Smoky Mountain Diner reopen and serve hot food to customers for the first time in a week.
Chimney Rock was another place people were giving up for lost. Norton said in emergencies, power is first restored to hospitals, police and other first responder posts, and water treatment plants. Restringing power to Chimney Rock’s fire department “dispelled a lot of myths” and brought hope to those in outlying areas that their power would also be restored soon. Power restoration operations are receiving a lot of assistance from the DOT as well as neighbors with chainsaws, who have already completed considerable amounts of clearing before Duke comes on the scene.
Norton said a lot of innovations used in this disaster recovery effort were learned from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He told how there was too much road damage and debris to get a truck to Asheville’s VA Hospital. So, two linemen hiked two miles to the hospital and back to string a temporary power line while work continued on a permanent solution. In one neighborhood, they had helicopters fly in power poles with crews on the ground guiding them into the holes. They are also flying drones to help with inspections.