Strong winds leave more than 5,000 power outages in Beaufort County
Published 11:12 am Friday, February 7, 2020
Lingering strong winds from an overnight storm system have left more than 5,000 outages for Tideland EMC and Duke Energy Progress customers Friday morning.
Tideland’ online outage viewer was showing approximately 3,000 outages as of Friday morning, with the vast majority falling in the North Creek , Pantego and Terra Ceia areas. Significant outages were also showing north of Bath, near Broad Creek and the west side of Blounts Bay. About 70 were without power near Hawkin’s Beach Road.
“We have numerous large outages in Beaufort, Craven and Pamlico County with reports of downed trees, broken poles and power lines on the ground. All available crews have been dispatched,” the co-op stated on social media Friday morning.
According to Tideland EMC Corporate communications manager Heidi Smith, many of these outages happened Friday morning, rather during the height of the storm last night.
Duke Energy maps showed approximately 2,000 outages on the south side of the Pamlico, stretching from the N.C. Highway 17 Bridge to the Blounts Creek community. Estimates placed restoration for those areas at 2 p.m.
According to Washington Electric Utilities Director Austin Tankard, all of the company’s main circuits were up and running Friday morning. While there were four isolated outages in that system overnight, this morning brought a few more scattered outages and a broken utility pole on Terrapin Track Road. The broken pole outage should take two to three hours to repair, and the issues on the Washington Electric Utilities grid can be handled in-house, according to Tankard.
From an overall perspective, Beaufort County Chief of Fire/Emergency Management Chris Newkirk says that there were no major issues associated with the storm, but cautioned that peak winds would last until about 2 p.m. Friday.
“The power outages have been the biggest issues we’ve had,” Newkirk said. “No reports of any structural damage. We have flooding where we expect to have flooding with this type of rain and wind. Really, so far, something as minor as trees down in the roadways, we’ve only had a few calls for things like that.”