We are happy to report that all members have been restored after Hurricane Helene caused significant damage to Fairfield Electric’s distribution system. The storm impacted more than 16,000 members of the cooperative. Hurricane Helene was a catastrophic storm with historic, Hugo-level impacts in South Carolina.

The cooperative’s crews worked around the clock to restore power. Given the severity of the destruction in Helene's wake, the process took several days.

This was not a simple restoration job. Some of our lines received significant damage.

• We haven’t seen this level of damage since Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
• Our crews worked hard to address this damage, and faced significant challenges out in the field. We had trees down, wire down, broken poles, broken crossarms and wet conditions that limited access to some areas by vehicle.
• We had 30 broken poles that were snapped by this storm and needed to be replaced. It can take up to 3-4 hours, on average, for a four-man crew to replace a broken pole.

The extended power outage was a significant inconvenience, and we care deeply about how this affected our members.

• We worked as quickly and safely as possible until all power was restored.
• Due to the significant damage and the length of time it took to repair each line section, we couldn't give our members an estimated time of restoration.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we worked diligently to restore power to all our members.

Please see videos below detailing some of the outage updates we provided during our Hurricane Helene restoration efforts.