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Co-ops join forces to restore
power to rural Mississippi
While the media focus on the destruction and human misery Hurricane Katrina has inflicted on urban areas in Mississippi and in New Orleans, rural Mississippi is suffering too. Thousands of our rural residents are suffering lost or damaged homes. Their difficulties were compounded early on by the extended loss of telephone communications and electric service.
On that front, there’s good news to report: Mississippi’s 25 consumer-owned electric power associations worked together in a massive emergency power restoration effort to repair and re-energize lines in the fastest, most efficient manner. They made significant progress every day, with help from electric cooperatives work crews from 21 other states.
Ten electric power associations completed their power restoration in four days or less. Within five days after the hurricane, crews had restored power to a total of more than 111,600 meters statewide.
At this writing, electric power associations have restored power to all meters able to receive power.
Electric cooperatives routinely join forces for emergency operations. The total work force involved in the restoration of service to electric power association members comprised more than 10,000 employees of Mississippi electric power associations and other electric cooperatives. Our work force grew daily as additional crews became available.
Mississippi electric power associations are consumer-owned cooperatives that distribute electricity to a total of 702,491 electric meters, located primarily in rural and suburban areas of the state. We estimate that 489,000, or 70 percent, of those meters lost electric service at the peak of the outage.
All electric power associations experienced some power outages, but most of those serving southern and coastal Mississippi suffered a complete loss of power.
The storm destroyed more than 50,000 utility poles and thousands of miles of power line in our service area—all of which had to be replaced.
Complete power restoration was expected to take as long as six weeks in remote or heavily damaged areas. The great majority of the work, however, was completed within three weeks of the storm.
We appreciate our consumers’ patience during the emergency. Most understand that power line repair is dangerous, exacting work where shortcuts are not an option. Nothing is more important than the safety of our linemen and consumers.
Our employees and emergency crews worked 16 to 18 hours every day to deal with Katrina’s historic and profound impact on rural Mississippi.
We are proud of their selfless dedication to rebuilding their communities, and of the cooperation among electric co-ops to get the job done.
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