At the peak of the storm, about 2,220 Progress Energy customers in Moore County were without power. By 4 p.m. Monday, all the customers were with power.
Extremely proactive work by Progress Energy crews cutting dangerous tree limbs and quick response to reported power outages kept most people warm throughout the storm.
“Crews were in place and responded throughout Sunday night to outages caused by the storm,” said Andy Honeycutt, Progress Energy’s community relations manager in Moore County. “While the storm had a substantial impact to this part of the state, proactive tree trimming program assisted in reducing the number of power disruptions experienced by out customers.”
The ice storm hit the Seven Lakes area along with much of the rest of the northern part of the county particularly hard, but Randolph Electric Membership Corp. reported that the largest outage lasted slightly more than an hour and affected 1,183 Seven Lakes residents.
Progress Energy brought in an additional 1,900 workers to the storm areas. Those that helped deal with the storm in Moore County were part of Progress Energy’s South Carolina Task Force.
“They provide a great resource and back-up opportunities for us,” Honeycutt said. “They willingly leave their family, for an unknown amount of time. They were a very positive part of the restoration process.”
Charlie Allen, the leader of the task force, said his team was in Sanford, but because Sanford didn’t have any problems, they moved down to Southern Pines early Monday morning.
“That’s what we do,” Allen said. “We go anywhere there are problems.”
His crew relieved local Progress Energy workers who had been working throughout the night.
Allen said this storm was a breeze compared to some of the other events his crew has worked. The task force has been sent to Wilmington and Louisiana in the aftermath of hurricanes. The task force has also worked other disasters in Arkansas.
“It’s not just Progress Energy areas,” he said.
Compared to the issues his team had to deal with in Louisiana, this ice storm was easy. In Louisiana, the crews had to stay in a hotel that didn’t have power.
Allen said it’s possible that the December ice storm and some of the other winter weather systems that have come into the Sandhills cleared this area of weak tree limbs.
“When you have two storms very close together that does happen,” he said.
But he said it’s also possible that the first ice storm and later high winds weakened limbs to the breaking point. The key was to actively look for those types of limbs before they fell on lines, he said.
“We tried to identify those, but there is so much line out there, I don’t think it would be possible to find them all,” he said.
When Allen gets called in to help with an event, he asks for volunteers to go with him. He likes to take 35 to 50 workers with him, depending on the magnitude of the incident. In this case, workers had to leave their families on Valentine’s Day.
“I told them a lot of them would be in the doghouse,” Allen said.
Allen always gets more volunteers than he needs.
“I think that’s a tribute to these guys,” he said. “They are wanting to go put the lights back on.”
