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Hurricane Helene historic impact to rural cooperatives

The CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association says Hurricane Helene has had a historical impact across seven southeastern states.

In a call Tuesday afternoon with reporters, Jim Matheson says around 500,000 cooperative members remain without power.

“We’ve never seen something like this in some of our service territories.”  He says, “I always like to point out electric cooperatives serve the most remote, hardest to serve areas in the country.”

Thomas Golden, CEO of North Carolina’s EnergyUnited, says much of the true extent of damage is still not known.

“This is not just a matter of power outages, it’s about lives turned upside down.”  He says, “Some of our hardest hit areas are not dealing with a simple fix.  They’re facing a complete rebuild of their electrical infrastructure, their roads, and even their daily lives.”

Mike Couick, CEO of Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, tells Brownfield patience will be key.

“We’ve already counted over 2,000 power poles knocked down.”  He says, “Blue Ridge Electric Coop is rebuilding a system of 7,300 miles of line.  That’s almost the diameter of the planet Earth. It runs straight up mountain sides.”

Matheson says cooperatives from across the country are pitching in on the rebuilding effort.

“From 15 states, electric cooperatives sent both people and equipment in, so it’s around 6500 people who’ve come in.”  He says, “I have to say that some of them are in some pretty tough circumstances, just finding a place to house them.  In some places, they’re in tents, but the work continues.”

Couick says…

“Our state is hurting.  Our Co-op members are hurting.”  He says, “It’s gonna be a while before we’re back to normal.”

Officials say it could take weeks for power to be fully restored across the hardest hit rural areas of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia.