Electricity is an essential tool most Columbia County residents lost Thursday night when Hurricane Helene blew through the area with its hurricane force winds.
With the exception of those fortunate few who have the use of generators, local residents can expect at least a few more hours, or days, with no power.
During a Hurricane Helene briefing, which also served as a county commission meeting on Friday afternoon, representatives from area power companies were unable to provide short term time frame when power would be restored.
The Florida Power and Light representative who addressed county officials at the meeting said 14,600 customers were without power on Friday afternoon and the company was enlisting the aid of 10,000 power company workers from 23 states to help restore power.
Troy Adams, District Manager with Clay Electric Cooperative, said 18,473 Columbia County customers lost power when the powerful storm passed through the area Thursday night.
“It increased through the night and that’s where we’re currently at,” he said on Friday afternoon, after briefing county officials during special county commission meeting. “It started out low numbers and as the storm came in went up. We’re working through it right now.”
Adams was uncertain how long it would take for a majority of customers to have their services restored.
“We’re actually trying to reconnect some right now as we go through our assessment process, so until we get done with that assessment, we’ve got to get a handle on how many poles we’ve got to change, how many locations we’ve got down, how much right of way we need to cut and trees, and that gives us the timeframe from there on how many crews we need, what assets we need and how long that’s going to take, then we can start putting timelines to it.”
According to Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative on Friday morning, just 19 of the cooperative’s 28,867 consumers had power. Only one person on SVEC had service in Columbia County.
Hurricane Helene, when it trekked through Columbia County, brought hurricane force winds of at least 112 mph which toppled trees, knotted power lines, snapped power poles and popped transformers across the county.
The damage has been so severe, extensive and far reaching, most of the assessments needed to restore power had not been completed by 12 hours after the storm struck the area.
During the meeting Adams noted crews were still out attempting to complete their assessments, some using the aide of drones.
“Some areas that are blocked by trees, debris and high water that we can’t get vehicles in or walk through, we’ll fly a drone through that area, take pictures of it, look at it…then you assess what you need to get that one to come back on.”
Clay Electric is using the drone technique companywide at the current time, but noted there is a substantial amount of damage in the area of the Fort White and Branford substations.
“We are using all those assets right now to get that assessed,” Adams said.