To report an outage, call
1-800-448-2383
6 pm Outage Update: Crews Continue Working Saturday Evening and into Sunday
With additional line technicians assisting Blue Ridge Energy crews, power restoration efforts continue this evening and into Sunday to restore 687 members remaining without power from an early Saturday morning ice storm.
Caldwell County has been hardest hit, with 659 members still without power here. In Wilkes County, 21 remain without power, 5 in Ashe County, one in Alexander County and one in Alleghany County. The cooperative anticipates it could be Sunday evening before all power is restored due to the widespread and extensive nature of damage in some system locations.
Over 260 different areas of the cooperative’s system were damaged from trees and large limbs mangling power lines and breaking power poles. Additional line crews assisting Blue Ridge Energy are sister cooperatives Energy United, Union Power and Surry-Yadkin Electric Membership Corporation. Also assisting are tree contractors Sumter Utilities, Inc. and Asplundh Tree Expert Co.
Outages began at 2:21 am Saturday morning and the height of the outages occurred at 6 am when 5,378 members were without power.
The cooperative reminds members to report all outages by calling 1-800-448-2383 or by using the Blue Ridge Energy mobile app.
Downed power lines pose a safety danger: the public is warned that downed lines can still be energized and therefore dangerous, even deadly. Blue Ridge Energy advises the public to stay far away from downed lines and report them by calling 1-800-451-5474 or 911 immediately. Only a trained line technician working with the cooperative should go near a downed power line.
Blue Ridge Energy serves some 76,000 members in Caldwell, Watauga, Ashe, and Alleghany counties as well as parts of Avery, Alexander and Wilkes counties. Learn more at www.BlueRidgeEnergy.com or on the cooperative’s social media on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.