Friday morning, Carroll Electric Membership Cooperative (EMC) assessed significantly less damage from Hurricane Helene than originally expected. The Category 4 hurricane hit the Florida Big Bend in the late hours of the night and tracked east of Atlanta, sparing those to the west. 

Hurricane Helene, spanning nearly 500 miles wide, wreaked havoc across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Electric cooperatives were prepared for multi-day outage events caused by the extensive rainfall and damaging winds that would down trees and power lines. Expecting an almost total system rebuild, Carroll EMC brought in mutual aid from cooperatives in Illinois and Virginia as well as contractors and vendors to provide additional support, supplies and services. The cooperative activated its Emergency Response Plan and had all employees on-call to respond once the storm system had passed.

“We were briefed on how active this hurricane season would be back in June,” said Tommy Cook, Vice President of Operations for Carroll EMC. “It’s been a few years since we’ve had a large-scale outage event, so we’ve been on high alert. All forecasts showed Helene heading straight towards us, and we were all shocked watching the radar as it took a different turn.” 

Charting much lower than forecasted, wind speeds early Friday morning reached 30 mph with some gusts just over 40 mph. Together with steady rainfall, what would be considered only a handful of Carroll EMC Members in ratio to its total membership experienced outages at the height of the storm. Numbers fluctuated throughout the day as trees continued to topple onto power lines resulting in 10 broke poles. 

All foreign crews were released by Friday evening to assist electric co-ops to the south and east who are facing complete reconstruction of their grid. Eight linemen from Carroll EMC are traveling to Coastal Electric Cooperative in Midway, GA for mutual aid. 

Hurricane season is not over, and Carroll EMC encourages Members to stay prepared for potential storms that might affect the area. Visit carrollemc.com/stormcenter for safety and preparedness tips and follow the cooperative on social media for updates. 

Carroll EMC is a Member-owned cooperative providing electricity to approximately 55,000 homes and businesses. The co-op serves Members in Carroll, Haralson, Heard, Paulding, Polk, Floyd and Troup counties. This institution is an equal opportunity provider and employer. For more information visit the cooperative’s website at carrollemc.com or follow Carroll EMC on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and YouTube. Carroll EMC: Community Built. Community Builder.