Paris, Tenn.–Paris Board of Public Utilities crews have been hard at work during the overnight hours working to get power restored to the more than 10,500 customers in Paris and Henry County left without power during the Sunday afternoon storms. As of this morning at 8 am, the number of customers without power has been reduced to around 2,900 but there are still over 150 outages to repair.
The storm is one of the largest storms in BPU history, leaving over 20 downed poles, significant amounts of wire on the ground and widespread damage across the county. To assist with restoration efforts, BPU is bringing in three outside crews and utilizing members of various other BPU departments to assist where possible.
“I want to be fully transparent with our customers,” according to BPU General Manager, Terry Wimberley, “with the amount of damaged caused to our system, it is very likely that some customers will remain without power through Monday evening and into Tuesday.”
Restoration efforts began Sunday afternoon around 3:30 pm with a focused effort on repairing the damaged three-phase circuits first; crews spent most of Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening making these repairs. The restoration process begins with getting the largest outages (those impacting the largest number of customers) restored first.
Outside crews have worked diligently to isolate outages where possible and get power restored as quickly and as safely as possible but with over 170 outages at the peak of this storm, complete restoration will be a lengthy process.
“Rest assured that our crews and our organization are doing everything in our power to get power fully restored,” said Wimberley. “We will know more about the expected time until full restoration at the end of the day today and will communicate that via our Facebook page and website.”
BPU thanks its customers for their patience during this time and urges you to please use caution as roadways could be dangerous with debris left by the storm.