CHELCO afternoon update day three

DEFUNIAK SPRINGS, Fla., October 12, 2018 – At approximately 2 p.m. local, CHELCO crews, contractors and crews from Mississippi cooperatives continue to work outages. Crews will continue to work Saturday and Sunday as needed.

At the height of the storm, CHELCO reported 21,000 member-accounts without service due to Michael. Today, about 2,000 members remain without power. The CHELCO outage management system is updated as power is restored, members call in outages or the system detects outages. Therefore, outage numbers can fluctuate up and down.

“Our crews are making great strides, and restoration efforts are going remarkably well,” said CHELCO CEO Steve Rhodes. “Restoring power can be a formidable process. Our crews are still finding that they have to remove numerous trees and repairs lines, poles and cross arms in order to restore power, so the process is slow and tough. This also makes it difficult to predict when power will be restored to individual homes and businesses. Our crews are working diligently to make repairs safely and quickly.”

Outages can be monitored on CHELCO’s outage map. A link is available at CHELCO.com.

CHELCO encourages members to call in their outages to keep the system updated current. Outages can be reported through the CHELCO Connect app or online at CHELCO.com.

CHELCO is a not-for-profit electric distribution cooperative serving more than 52,000 accounts in Walton, Okaloosa, Holmes and Santa Rosa counties.

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