Outage Restoration Complete in Watauga County

Lenoir, North Carolina (December 31, 2009-9 a.m. update) - It's a happy New Year's Eve for members of Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation in Watauga County where the most devastating ice storm in recent history had left some without power since Christmas Day.

At the end of major outage restoration, there may be isolated, single residence outages that are difficult to detect. Therefore, members in Watauga County who are at their service location and do not have power are asked to contact the cooperative at (828) 264-8894 or 1-800-448-2383. Line technicians will continue cleanup work and final details into this weekend.

At the height of the outage, more than 25,000 members of the cooperative were without power in Watauga, Ashe, Caldwell, and Alleghany counties as well as parts of Wilkes and Avery counties.

Assisting Blue Ridge line technicians in power restoration efforts were crews from the following 11 different utilities including neighboring cooperatives Rutherford, Randolph, Piedmont, EnergyUnited, UnionPower, Pee Dee, Lumbee River, and Central EMC, and Blue Ridge Energies as well as crews from Pike Corporation, Carter Utility Services and Asplundh Tree Expert Company.

Public Relations Director Renee Whitener said the lengthy outage is an unusual event for Blue Ridge Electric, as the ice storm damaged nearly half the cooperative's 7,000 miles of power lines and took down some 150 power poles. Hundreds of outage source locations and damage to the system occurred in areas served by the cooperative in very remote, mountainous terrain. Heavy debris and fallen trees also blocked access to major as well as secondary roads early in the restoration process.

In a video posted on www.BlueRidgeEMC.com, Chief Executive Officer Doug Johnson relays a message thanking cooperative members for their patience, for those who helped feed and house the 300 line technicians working in extreme conditions, for the linemen and employees working long hours behind the scenes, and for everyone who took part in any way to help get power restored.

Blue Ridge Electric updates can also be found on Facebook.

The electric cooperative serves some 73,000 members in Caldwell, Watauga, Ashe, Alleghany, Wilkes, Avery and Alexander counties.