Four-County Electric Power Association employees started the new year battling damage caused by Mother Nature. The severe weather that hit the service area New Year”s Eve and early New Year”s Day caused several minor outages in each of the Association”s districts and what appears to have been a tornado broke several poles and knocked down lines in eastern Noxubee County.
About 10 three-phase poles were destroyed by the apparent tornado along Highway 14 East and Paulette Road and several more were damaged. Crews responded to the area around 5 a.m. 4-County Manager of Operations Anthony Miller said things could have been much worse.
From a utility standpoint, we were lucky. We did see several scattered outages across the whole service territory Friday night and early Saturday and there was some serious damage to poles and lines in Noxubee County but only a small amount of our customers were affected overall and of those, most saw their power restored quickly,” said Miller. Several structures in the Paulette Road area were destroyed including a dairy farm, out buildings and what appeared to be at least one home.
Miller added that several crews were already at work in Noxubee County, replacing the broken and damaged poles and that more crews would join them as they finished other calls during the day. “The biggest problem besides the damage is the conditions the men are working in,” said Miller. He noted that the plummeting temperatures, windy conditions and heavy rains overnight all combined make the work that much more difficult. Miller anticipates that work will continue in Noxubee County until at least dark Saturday.
Overall, about 1,300 total members across the service territory were without power at various times Friday night and early Saturday morning. By mid-morning Saturday that number was down to just more than 400.
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