Sometimes in life, it’s good to face adversity. While it may not always be pleasant, overcoming difficult things makes us stronger in the long run. 

The same can be said in the co-op world. We recently faced and overcame adversity of our own when a surprisingly strong line of storms swept across much of the southeast in a system that stretched as far to the north as Illinois and spanned several states in width.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 9, CHELCO’s service area began feeling the effects of this dangerous weather system. By the time the sun had risen, multiple reported tornadoes, strong wind gusts and heavy rain left nearly 11,000 members without power at the peak of our system outages. In total, more than 15,000 meters were out of power at some point during the storm, equivalent to nearly one-fourth of our entire system.

During events like these, regular day-to-day operations take a pause, and the focus shifts to restoring power to all members in a safe and efficient manner. With crews and support staff working long hours and targeting the largest outages first, all but around 1,000 members were restored within 24 hours.

The hardest hit locations were south of Freeport, Red Bay and Knox Hill. A full team effort was directed at those areas, including assistance from Covington and Escambia River Electric Cooperatives, who each sent seven linemen to assist. Power was fully restored late the night of Jan. 10.

I’m grateful to our entire team for the outstanding job of restoring power to our members after this severe weather. Their dedication to our members was on full display and was appreciated not only by me, but our members and Board of Trustees as well.

I would like to thank Covington and Escambia River Electric Cooperatives, as well as contract crews from PowerGrid Services. I also greatly appreciate our wholly-owned subsidiary, Southland Utility Services, for cutting trees, limbs and other debris away from the rights-of-way, as well as providing other support services, allowing our crews to more efficiently restore power. Finally, thank you to our members, many of whom waited patiently for hours while we restored power. Your patience and resilience did not go unnoticed, and we all appreciated the kind words shared on social media and to our staff directly.

Storms like these, while frustrating for us and our members, bring us together in ways that only adversity can. We’re glad it’s over, but now, we are better for it. Have a great month!