Outages Occurring in Blue Ridge Electric Area
For Immediate Release
Contact: Renee Whitener, Director of Corporate Communications, Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation, (828) 758-2383 ext. 3213; Pager:1-800-471-1323; or E-mail: Renee Whitener
Lenoir, North Carolina (July 2, 2002—7:35 p.m.) – A summer storm sweeping over Ashe, Watauga, Caldwell and surrounding counties have led to outages affecting nearly 2,000 Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation members Tuesday evening. Crews of Blue Ridge Electric linemen were on the scene in all three counties and expecting to work well into the evening to fully restore power.
The outages began occurring in mid afternoon in Watauga and Ashe counties, and escalated into Caldwell County by 6:30 p.m. As of 7 p.m., 1,661 members were without power in Watauga County. While many of the outages were scattered throughout the county, concentrated areas of outages affected the communities of Sherwood, Todd, and Blowing Rock. In Caldwell County, 235 members, primarily in the Patterson community, were affected. And in Ashe County, 186 members across the county lost power.
Blue Ridge Electric is a member-owned, not-for-profit cooperative serving over 64,000 consumers in Caldwell, Watauga, Ashe, Alleghany, Wilkes and Alexander counties.
