Early reports this morning (Sunday) show that Roanoke Electric Cooperative has over 3,000 member-owners without power with the most significant concentration of outages occurring in Bertie, Halifax and Hertford.

The crews have started assessing system damage brought by Hurricane Matthew’s impact. Preliminary assessments indicate that the restoration effort may take days to fully restore power to all member-owners being affected due to the extent of road damage throughout our service area.

“Our first priority is to address public safety for our line crews in order to ensure that roads are passable,” said Billy Yates, Vice-President of engineering and operations.

Roanoke’s crews will have support from additional crews from our North Carolina cooperative peers to help with make as much progress with restoration efforts. Today, these crews will work as quickly and safely as possible to restore power to all cooperative member-owners. The restoration effort generally involves performing repairs at any substation that may be completely out, primary and secondary lines on the system, medical facilities and individuals on life-support, and individual services.

You can stay updated on our restoration progress by visiting www.roanokeelectric.com/outage.

Member-owners and all North Carolinians are asked to be especially vigilant of work areas. Please do not go out on the roads today unless absolutely necessary. Road shoulders are saturated or inaccessible, which means crews will have to set up their trucks and equipment on the road in some locations. Help keep the linemen safe.

Roanoke thanks its member-owners for their patience, and are reminded to only use generators and charcoal grills in well-ventilated areas; a garage does not count as a well-ventilated area. Never touch a downed power line, and remember that sometimes debris can cover fallen lines, making them difficult to spot.

Roanoke Electric Cooperative is an electric utility providing service to 14,000 people in Bertie, Hertford, Halifax, Northampton, Gates, Perquimans and Chowan counties.