By Richard Hatfield
The Volunteer Electric Cooperative (VEC) had significant hurdles to overcome after the bout of severe weather last week, particularly from the powerful winds that wracked Tennessee. VEC began reporting outages around 1 PM after they received calls about downed trees and electrical lines on fire. By then, they had already assigned linemen to restore power. Shortly after 4 PM, VEC reported a total of over 20,000 outages ranging from Pickett County all the way to Hamilton County. They had received reports of live power lines covering roads in Hamilton County, specifically. Eventually, VEC reported reducing the total outage count to 17,000 by 10 PM.
Two hours later, they were able to further reduce the total to 13,000 across the affected counties. Seeing the tremendous scope of the damage, VEC called upon contract crews for assistance. With their crews working through the late night hours, they had the number down to 11,000 by 6:20 AM. The number fell under 10,000 roughly two hours later as they worked through Saturday with further repairs. At 2 PM, VEC revealed they had repaired around 2/3 of the initial outage with only a little over 7,000 outages remaining. This number shot down to 5,325 outages at 6 PM. On Saturday at 11 PM, VEC still had crews at work, repairing the remaining 3,500 outages.
Sunday morning, VEC thanked customers for their patience and revealed the latest number at 2,687. Later, into the afternoon hours at 3:30 PM, a relieved VEC announced they only had approximately 1,100 that remained. They continued thanking all their customers and workers for their support. The next morning, they only had 73 outages to repair.
