As Hurricane Helene ripped through Western North Carolina with strong winds and steady, heavy rain, the power went out and roads were closed.
Duke Energy says that as of 12:30 p.m. on Friday, September 27, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said that more than 300 roads were stopped and more than 900,000 people were without power.
A message from Duke Energy to its users around 8:30 p.m. on Friday said the following:
Crews have found that Helene did a lot of terrible damage that will need a lot of work to fix. You can find out when the repair is expected to happen at duk.us/05 if you don’t already have an idea of when it will happen. Thank you very much for your patience.
It was reported by News 13 that more than 452,000 homes in Western North Carolina did not have power. He said that workers might not be able to start working on the problems for several hours.
“Given the breadth of the damage, tropical force winds are still bringing down trees as we speak, and winds are too high for lineworkers to operate – for safety reasons,” he stated. “They can’t be on a pole or in a bucket truck when the wind speed is over 30 mph. “This will take several days to fix up.”
Nortton said that some customers might get their power back later today, but that fixing the places that were hit the hardest will take several days.
The French Broad Electric Membership Corporation said that 40,000 of its 42,000 users did not have power as of 3 p.m. on Friday.