Hurricane Helene - Outage Updates

Thursday, October 3, 9:30pm - After a challenging and exhausting week, all electric outages related to Hurricane Helene have been restored, aside from customers who need to make individual repairs. We are so appreciative of our customers’ thoughts, prayers, kind words, and patience. You may continue to see BTES and other crews working to repair our fiber optic distribution cables, service drops and make final repairs on our electric system over the weekend and into next week.

Thursday, October 3, 10:30am – As we stand right now, we’ve got about 61 customers still off. We made great progress through the night, but we’ve got 61 we are still working on today and that is at about five different work locations. As we are getting towards the end of electric outages, we are continuing to focus on repairs to our fiber system.  We still have crews that are going to be doing that for several days, working on splicing the main distribution fibers as well as drops that go to each individual house. Please bear with us as we keep working on that for the next several days. As we move out of this phase on the power outage side of things, we will be transitioning into a permanent fix and making final repairs. You may still see crews working over the weekend – both BTES crews and some out-of-town crews working to do things like replace poles or make permanent repairs where we had done things temporarily to get power restored as quick as we could. Thank you for your patience and understanding. We value your positive comments.

Thursday, October 3, 7:45pm – Where we stand right now, we have about five outages left. All of those are in progress or have been assigned and waiting for a crew to be available to go to that job. We expect those to be wrapped up within the next couple of hours. Things have gone well today and we are thankful that process has come to completion. We will continue working for several days on fiber related outages, both on distribution fiber cables and individual service drops. You’ll still see a lot of our trucks still out working on fiber and also some out of town crews still working with us to make permanent repairs to the electric system where temporary repairs were made over the last six days. It has been a long week but we have a great team who has done exceptionally well serving our customers. We want to thank you, our customers, for your patience, understanding, thoughts, prayers, and kind words that we’ve received. We are honored and happy to be here to serve you and look forward to continuing to do that as we move forward.

Wednesday, October 2, 8:15pm – We have about 100 customers still without power and we are actively working those. We made great progress today and expect to make great progress tomorrow. Just a reminder, we are at that point that we want to make sure that we have all of the smaller and individual outages reported. To our knowledge, that process has gone very well. The first option has been around a long time and is probably the one you are very familiar with which is calling out Automated Outage Reporting System at 423-968-2837. Follow the automated process and respond to the prompts and that will get your outage reported into our database. Many have already done that and no need to do it again if you’ve already done it. The other method we have established specific for this event is a special form to fill out. This form asks for your name, address, phone number, if your outage is electric, fiber, or both, and then any notes you may have and you can attach a picture related to your outage, as well. From all the submissions we received throughout the day today, everyone of those have been validated and were already in our database. We appreciate you all making sure we had that information. Also, we’ve received questions or comments about if we’ve got so many extra people working then why is this taking so long. So far in this process, we have either replaced or performed major repairs to over 40 power poles. To give some perspective, a normal crew on a nice, clear day under normal conditions, normally takes them about 4-6 hours to do a standard pole replacement. In this situation, you add the complexity of the terrain, the other catastrophic damage that is in the area including trees, power lines, and other cables that were attached to the poles that are in the way, and there is a lot of other factors that add into the complexity that then can oftentimes cause that process to take longer or be more challenging. Also, for comparison, we’ve had to either replace or make major repairs to more poles in this event than any other event in the last several decades…maybe ever. So, the total scope and magnitude of this event is vastly different than anything we’ve seen in many years. All those factors combined and the complexity of the terrain and other things are what caused this to take so much longer even with all the additional crews that have been brought in. As we’ve said before, our crews will continue to working through the night and into the day tomorrow, and continuously, until all electric services are restored. Our fiber optic crews also continue to make repairs and we’ve brought in additional resources to help there, as well.

Wednesday, October 2, 10:45am – Over the last 14 hours or so, we have been able to bring the outage number down to 250 customers that are still without electricity. Things went well overnight, and crews are continuing to work and do a lot of pole change outs. We are continuing to sift through all of the outage reports we have received through numerous sources and currently have approximately 250 customers still experiencing an outage. If you are still experiencing an outage, we ask that you report your outage again so that we can cross-reference our records. You can do this through one of the two below options:

1. Call the Automated Outage Reporting System at 423-968-2837 and follow the prompts.

OR

2. Fill out the Hurricane Helene Outages - Cross Reference Form at www.btes.net/helene. You will be able to provide additional information and relevant photographs at this link.

Tuesday, October 1, 4:30pm – In addition to BTES' seven power line crews and other employees, we are forever grateful to several other utilities who are providing mutual aid. These include Jackson Energy Authority, Florence Alabama Electricity Department, Russellville Utilities, Huntsville Utilities, Loudon Utilities, and City of Alcoa, TN Government which added 43 more employees to our restoration efforts. We are also thankful for Tennessee Valley Public Power Association's help in finding and coordinating these mutual aid efforts and appreciative of several BTES retirees and employees' family members for their help. Crews continue to work around the clock to restore services.

Tuesday, October 1, 9:00am update – Since our last update, we are down another 100 customers who we have restored power to and that puts us around 700 customers who are still off. We have heard some questions and received some comments about getting calls about getting calls from our Automated Power Outage Reporting System saying that we think your power is on but your power is still off. This is a normal part of the process.

When a large-scale event like this happens, there are lots of problems all across the service area such as wires and trees down. We may have a main street that has a big problem such as poles broken and wires down and we get those repairs made but there may be a side street that has just a couple of customers on it that may have a separate problem. Sometimes we know about that separate problem but sometimes we do not. One of the tools we have is the Automated Power Outage Reporting System. By calling that system and letting us know you have an outage is the first step – which many of our customers have already done that. We use that same system to make call backs. For example, if we restore power to a certain area that is impacting 50 people, the system automatically calls that group of customers back. It could be that our repairs restored service to 45 people but a small group of five may have a totally separate problem that is an “outage within an outage.” Selecting the appropriate prompts to indicate that their power is still out helps us narrow down and keep up with the last five that have a separate problem. Providing that feedback is very helpful to manage outages.

Crews continue working around the clock and we have additional crews coming from Middle Tennessee to join our restoration efforts today. We will continue working until all services have been restored.

Tuesday, October 1, 1:17am – Our crews continue to work around the clock to restore services.

Monday, September 30, 7:25pm – So far today, we’ve got about 150 more customers restored which puts us about 800 customers still without power at this point. As we’ve talked about before, we will keep working continuously until we get all services restored. At this point, it looks like it will be several days from where we are right now. We’ve got at least 60 locations to send crews to make repairs.

Monday, September 30, 8:00am – As of this morning, we’ve got about 950 customers still without power and more than 60 different locations that we haven’t been to yet. We made some progress over night but we still have a long way to go. One thing that we want to remind everybody as we begin to restore power, if you reported your outage through our Automated Power Outage Reporting System, we will use that system to automatically call you back when we believe we have restored service. This tool will prompt you to give us confirmation that your services are restored or give you an opportunity to let us know that your services are not restored, as we had thought. Often times what we find that a larger outage may have a smaller outage within it that may have completely separate damage. Answering the prompts allows us to have that additional information of where other outages may be located which we may not know until we receive that feedback. If you get a call and we ask you if your power is on and it is not, please make sure to press the appropriate button and let us know.

Sunday, September 29, 8:30pm – To reflect back a little bit of when the storm came through on Friday morning, at the height of the storm we probably had about 16,000 customers that were impacted from the outages. Where we stand right now, we are down to about 1,000 customers who are without electricity at about 75 different work locations that we haven’t been able to get to yet. There were approximately 130-140 work locations when we first started, and we have at least 75 locations yet to go. In addition to the power outages, we are still working around the clock on fiber splicing. We have several locations where the distribution cables that run alongside the power lines were damaged. Our crews are actively working those and will continue for multiple days. Just as a reminder for those who may still be without power, we still have several days of work ahead of us and its possible that your power may be out for several days. At this point, if you need to take measures for your medical devices or things like that, please take those precautions now.

Sunday, September 29, 11:00am – As of this morning, we were able to restore several hundred customers power over the night and into this morning and we are down to around 2,000 customers without power. We are in that phase where things could take a long time and we are actively working to restore things as quickly as possible. One thing to note and share some prospective, on a normal day we have 72 full time employees who perform all different functions here at BTES. Currently, we have more than 130 people actively working to restore services to our customers. This includes our normal full time employees, our friends from other utilities who have come in to provide help, tree contractors, and we’ve enlisted BTES retirees to come back and give us a hand, as well. Family members have also been helping that are not even counted in that number. It is a team sport and we are all here to support each other. More importantly, we are all working to restore services to our customers. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this challenging time.

As a reminder, if you are currently without power, you may be in one of those groups who may be without power for several days in some cases.

Saturday, September 28, 9:00pm - As of this evening, we've reduced the number of outages to roughly 2,500 customers. So, we are making progress. Admittedly, we're just in that phase where things often taken a lot of work and time to see real results. We've got even more crews that have come in to help us from Alabama, and we're grateful for that, and we appreciate their support. In addition to the electric outages that you're very familiar with, we are seeing a lot of fiber outages as well. A lot of places where large trees have fallen and caused damage to the electric system have also severed fiber optic cables. In several cases, we have to wait for the poles to be replaced before we can actually repair the electric lines and fiber optic cable. So that's some of the precursor story that has to happen before some of these things can play out. We are actively working on all those things and trying to prioritize to get the most customers on as quickly as possible.

We recognize that there are questions out there about things that are going on, and I recognize that it may not always appear logical when your power is out, but your neighbor's power is on. There's a lot of factors that can play into that. Your neighbor may be electrically fed a different way. So, two neighbors could be on a different transformer, on a different electrical phase, or on a different circuit altogether. That's pretty common in an electric system. It is normal in many cases, for you to see two houses next to each other and one has power and the other does not.

Additionally, you may see our trucks in your area –  maybe briefly or maybe for an extended period of time – and you see them do work, but then suddenly they're gone, and your power hasn't been restored. There's a lot of things that play into that. Sometimes there's work that has to be done in other areas, even though you've seen us working in your area before, so that we can get power ready to deliver to you. Also, sometimes it's a matter of size and scale of the outage. Generally we are going to prioritize an outage to restore services to 150 customers before we work an outage that only gets five customers back on. We are always focused on how we can get the most customers back to normal as we can as quickly as possible.

Another question we're hearing has to do with Internet speed. And as you might expect, we have several Internet connections that connect our service area to the big Internet in multiple places across the country. Some of those go south to areas impacted by the recent hurricane events and those connections were severed. Although we do have redundant options and other ways to carry the Internet traffic, it's not just us using those circuits but all the other Internet providers in the Southeast United States that were impacted. There are times where our customers may see a little slower speeds than you're used to, and right now that's completely normal, only because of this unique weather event. We expect that to be resolved in a short period of time, but we want you to have the best service possible. We are actively working to find ways to mitigate that as best we can, and we are here to support you through this entire event. There's a lot of factors in play with an event like this, and we're doing all we can to serve you in the best way possible.

Saturday, September 28, 1:46pm: We are so thankful to Huntsville Utilities, Jackson Energy Authority, and Russellville Utilities for helping us make repairs following the significant damage caused by Hurricane Helene. One of the many great benefits of public power is the mutual aid partnerships. We would also be remiss if we didn’t mention the behind-the-scenes work that goes into supporting our crews so that they can solely focus on the job at hand - restoring services. From meals to materials to dispatching to engineering to bird-dogging to logistics, many BTES employees are working to support our line workers. Our employees appreciate your kind words and support. Knowing we have our community behind us helps get us through these tough times. We appreciate you being a BTES customer and your understanding through this event!

Saturday, September 28, 9:45am – We are excited to have some friends with us from Jackson Energy Authority, Russellville Electric, and Huntsville Utilities. We appreciate them being here to provide us some help our crews. We are still sitting around 3,000 customers without power right now. We were able to restore several hundred through the evening hours and this morning. We did have some other events come in and some customers may be without power again – which is how things like this go sometimes. We appreciate your patience through this.

Saturday, September 28, 3:47am – Our crews continue to work around the clock to restore services.

Friday, September 27, 10:00pm – As we go through the nighttime hours, our crews will continue to work until all customers are restored. At this point, it looks like it could be several days before all power is restored. Mutual aid crews are on their way coming from areas of West Tennessee and Alabama to give us a hand. They will start working in our area tomorrow. Right now, we have approximately 3,000 customers without power. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide individual estimated restoration times. The damage to our system is extensive and we prioritize how we handle these outages based on severity and the number of customers impacted. As a reminder, this starts with our substations and the primary electrical arteries that serve from those substations. From there, we focus on larger areas with outages that impact larger groups of customers. As we work through those, we get into the smaller outages that might impact 5-10 customers in that area. Then finally we work down to the smaller individual outages that may take several hours for full restoration. We have also seen extensive damage to our fiber network, as well. Large trees have brought down fiber optic cables and we are working towards fully restoring those services. We are aware that for a period of time some customers were having trouble reaching our outage reporting line due to some issues with telephone service. As far as we know, these have been resolved. If you were unable to call into the system earlier, we ask that you try again and report your outage. However, if you have already phoned in and reported your outage, there is no need to call us again at this time. We are encouraging customers to be prepared for extended outages that could last multiple days. We appreciate your support, thoughts, and prayers and we will continue to provide updates as available.

Friday, September 27, 6:20pm - Please know that some outages could last for multiple days. If you have reported your outage to our automated outage reporting system (423-968-2837), we have the information and there is no need to report it multiple times. We do not have individual estimated restoration times. Please prepare for extended outages as we work around the clock to restore the extensive and widespread damage caused by Hurricane Helene. We appreciate your patience as crews work over the next several days to restore services. We will continue to provide updates on our Facebook page as they are available.

 

Friday, September 27, 4:15pm – As of this afternoon, we have more than 6,000 customers without power particularly in the areas of Hickory Tree, Holston Valley, and Highway 421 areas. There is widespread damage and our crews are working aggressively to make repairs but it is going to be awhile. If you have medical needs, please make plans accordingly. In addition, we have enlisted the help of some other utilities in West Tennessee and Alabama that are coming our way to help. You may see some crews in the area that you are not used to seeing but they are here to help.

 

Friday, September 27, 12:05pm - Our area is seeing the impacts of Hurricane Helene. We've been impacted pretty hard with lots of rain and wind. Our crews have been out since before daybreak, through the evening and last night working, and we will continue working until all customers are restored. This is a pretty fluid situation. Many times we're restoring power, and then a few minutes later, the power goes back out. Most of this is caused from trees that are falling far away from the power lines, but still big enough to cause a lot of damage. The soft ground with all the rain and the high winds have really taken their toll. Our crews will be working until all the work is done, and in the meantime, we appreciate our customers patience and understanding as we work to restore everybody's power. We want our customers to understand that as we begin to restore power, we try to prioritize the biggest impact our team can make in the shortest amount of time. This means we start with large outages that impact substations and big areas and continue working until we get to the smaller outages that impact five or ten customers. So, it's very possible in an event like this, that you may see a crew roll through your area and identify the problem and they may even start to perform work. Something else may happen nearby that is a bigger issue so that crew may peel off and to address the larger issue because it impacts a lot on customers. It is a very fluid situation, and we just appreciate our customers understanding and patience as we try to do our best to restore service to everyone. One of the biggest things we ask right now is that our customers be very safe. If you come across a downed tree or power line, please stay away. Avoid it. Let us know, call our office at 423-968-1526, and report that information. Right now, we have approximately 2,700 customers without power, but that changes minute by minute. We encourage our customers, if you are at risk and need power to support medical devices or other lifeline services, please be prepared to make proper accommodations. We're here to serve you, and we will do our absolute best to get you back on as soon as we can. Please keep our crews and team in your thoughts and prayers.