Asheville – Duke Energy Carolinas has a monumental task ahead to fully restore power to WNC, but they have an abundance of help. Linemen have come to our aid from as far as Quebec, Montreal, and across the U.S. According to one report, more than 21,000 workers are in the area restoring power for Duke Energy.
Help Is Here!
One of the challenges of having that much help is where to put them, and how to feed them. A village with a command center for Duke employees, a Huge mess tent, and semi-trucks made specifically for this purpose hav been set up in the parking lot of the old Sears building at the Asheville Mall. Lodging Solutions, a Bolton Holdings company that specializes in 24/7 emergency deployment and disaster assistance, has supplied mobile sleepers, restrooms and showers trailers, full-service laundry and award-winning catering for the needs of the linemen who are here from out of town. Each semi trailer can sleep anywhere from 18 to 42 people, with air conditioning.
Another company that is providing support to Duke is One Source Restoration (OSR). OSR provides storm response resources that include damage assessors, wire down guards, distribution line crews, and service repair units. They can bring over 5,500 Linemen, 600 Damage Assessors, 360 Wire Down Watchers, and numerous support personnel to any disaster location.
Jason Hollifield with Duke Energy said, “We continue to work with a variety of stakeholders to get critical assets—like our vehicles, workers, poles, transformers, wire and more—to the areas where we are restoring power for our customers. We know partnerships and collaboration with local, state and federal agencies are critical, and will continue to be, as we collaborate with these communities to rebuild.”
Catastrophic Damage and Dificult Access
Many customers in western North Carolina are in areas where power cannot be restored quickly due to catastrophic damage—either homes cannot receive power, destruction of the grid infrastructure, or lack of access. These linemen working to restore power sometimes have to hike up to a mile and a half, cutting their way through fallen trees and other debris, just to get to the equipment to assess the damage. In addition, one lineman who prefers to remain anonymous shared that they are seeing things that will give them nightmares, including finding bodies.
One of the major issues Duke faced is that two of the substations in the area were heavily damaged by floodwaters, according to Duke spokesman Bill Norton. As a temporary fix, just to get everyone’s power back on, Duke was able to bring in two portable substations. Norton said, “It could mean the difference between an outage that lasts weeks versus an outage that will last days.” With cold weather coming in that timing will make a big difference to many WNC residents.
Another challenge these heroes are facing is landslides and having people who don’t need to be out on the roads in the way. In some cases it even puts these emergency workers at risk. If you do not have to go out, please stay home.
As of Sunday, October 6th, around 70,000 people were still without power, which is miraculous when you consider the widespread damage Helene left in her wake. More than 2.3 million Duke Energy customers lost power at some point during the storm in North and South Carolina.