Yesterday was a happy New Year's Eve for members of Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation in Watauga County where the most devastating ice storm in recent history had left some without power since Christmas Day. At the end of major outage restoration there may be isolated, single residence outages that are difficult to detect. Therefore, members in Watauga County who are at their service location and do not have power are asked to contact the cooperative at 800-448-2383. Line technicians will continue cleanup work and final details into this weekend.

At the height of the outage, more than 25,000 members of the cooperative were without power in Watauga, Ashe, Caldwell, and Alleghany counties as well as parts of Wilkes and Avery counties. Power restoration efforts were helped by crews from crews from 11 different utilities including neighboring cooperatives Rutherford, Randolph, Piedmont, EnergyUnited, UnionPower, Pee Dee, Lumbee River, and Central EMC, and Blue Ridge Energies as well as crews from Pike Corporation, Carter Utility Services and Asplundh Tree Expert Company.

Public Relations Director Renee Whitener said the lengthy outage is an unusual event for Blue Ridge Electric, as the ice storm damaged nearly half the cooperative's 3,000 miles of power lines and took down some 150 power poles. Hundreds of outage source locations and damage to the system occurred in areas served by the cooperative in very remote, mountainous terrain. Heavy debris and fallen trees also blocked access to major as well as secondary roads early in the restoration process.

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