Restoration efforts are still underway 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 are working around the clock to restore power but given the severity of the destruction in Helene's wake, this process is going to take several more days.
We’ve made progress.
- As of Wednesday afternoon, at 4:15 p.m. we’re down to 22 outages for co-op members, down from a peak of 16,100 Friday morning.
- It is all hands-on deck and all of our line crews are out in the field. We have received assistance from contract crews and additional crews are on the way.
This is 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 are working hard to address this damage, but we're facing significant challenges out in the field. We have trees down, wire down, broken poles, broken crossarms and the wet conditions is limiting 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.
An extended power outage is a significant inconvenience, and we care deeply about how this affects our members.
- We are working as quickly and safely as possible, but this effort will take time. It will be several days until all power is restored.
- Due to the significant damage and the length of time it takes to repair each line section, we can’t give our members an estimated time of restoration.
- We have never been more dependent on electricity than we are today, and we want to get the power on as soon as possible.
Please be patient with as we work to restore power as quickly and as safely as we can.
To report an outage, please call 1-800-499-7862.
To view outages, go to http://97.107.102.70/