Duke Energy working to restore power in the Carolinas

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Duke Energy's Jeff Brooks shares how his crews are working to restore power in the mountain regions of the Carolinas in the aftermath of Helene, which caused widespread devastation and flooding.

Transcript

00:00Many of your Carolina customers that are in the remote mountain areas, how difficult is it to

00:05repair those areas? Well, you know, on a good day there's terrain challenges and things that you

00:10face in the mountains. When you place a hurricane on top of it, it's almost unimaginable how difficult

00:15some of this is. As I said, many of the equipment in those areas has been destroyed, so it's not

00:21just getting in there to put a line back on a pole, it's completely reconstructing the line.

00:26And so that's a real challenge that we're going to face. Now, we're going to get many,

00:30most of our customers back home by the end of the week in non-impacted areas like that,

00:35but in those hard-hit areas, this is going to be an extended repair and we're doing our best

00:40to get the essentials back up. Hospitals, emergency services, some restaurants, grocery

00:45stores, wherever we can, but this is going to be a grind certainly. And what should customers

00:50without power remember to do? How can they stay safe in this dangerous situation?

00:57Well, we understand how difficult it is to be without power, especially when all your services

01:02are out. This is sort of a connection back to normal life that people are craving and we

01:06understand that. And our line workers and our employees are going through the same thing,

01:10many of them dealing with personal challenges or tragedies in their life too. So we just appreciate

01:15your patience, know that we're bringing as many resources as we can into the area, thousands and

01:20thousands more arriving throughout the day and tomorrow. And so that's going to give additional

01:24reinforcements. And as those conditions have improved, we're able to get and really start

01:29to make some headway in those areas. But we're just going to need your patience as we continue

01:33to work through these difficult times. All right. Patience, of course, the utmost

01:37importance, but everyone wants to know, you know, when do you anticipate full power restoration?

01:40Can you give us any kind of answer? Well, for most of our customers that are not in the most extreme

01:46areas, they will see their power back up later this week. And we've already restored 1.2 million

01:52customers and that continues to climb. Obviously, if you are in the areas where you've seen some of

01:57this devastation, we are working to provide those estimates to them as we understand kind of what

02:01the scope of work is. And so we will provide that as soon as possible and give them information.

02:07In the meantime, you know, we're doing everything we can to bring in temporary services,

02:11reroute power and think of innovative ways we can get some power back up in these communities.

02:16Jeff, we have one minute left. I want to ask you one last question. You talk about that the

02:19equipment have been destroyed. Are you talking about specific equipment or are you talking about

02:24actually power poles that have to be replaced? You know, we believe that right now about 50

02:31percent of the outages that we have in the upstate of South Carolina and the mountains

02:35of North Carolina will require significant replacement of infrastructure. So, yes,

02:39we're talking about utility poles, in some cases, maybe even substations and substation

02:45components. So these are major repairs. It's almost like building new service in that area

02:49in some places. And so that's going to be a real challenge. But we're bringing in the material we

02:54need to get it closer to those impacted areas. And as we restore these communities, we want to

02:59make sure that we've got all the people and resources that we can do that as quickly as

03:03possible. Jeff Brooks, spokesperson with Duke Energy, incredible information you provided for

03:07us this morning and really kind of setting the stage and the perspective of what you all are

03:11dealing with. And we appreciate all your crews and all the hard work you guys are doing. Thank you.

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