Restoration efforts continue Thursday afternoon

As of 4 p.m. Thursday, CHELCO has approximately 55 outages affecting more than 500 members throughout CHELCO’s service territory. Crews have continued to restore power to as many members as possible following Hurricane Sally.

“Restoration efforts are going well, especially given the flooding throughout our service territory,” said CHELCO CEO Steve Rhodes. “Our team in the field and in the offices are working to coordinate safe restoration to the areas of the system with substantial damage. It’s been a very long last couple days for our team, yet they remain diligently focused and in good spirits. We appreciate our members’ patience, as well as their support and encouragement.”

Most large outages have been restored, and crews are working to restore isolated outages affecting smaller groups of members across CHELCO’s service territory. CHELCO anticipates power will be restored to most locations capable of receiving power Thursday night, with exceptions to flooded and hazardous areas.

 “The flooding in Shoal River is forcing us to use alternate routes to access outages in Okaloosa County,” said Kevin Jones, Manager of Engineering. “Several main highways are closed, including Hwy. 90 and I-10, which are our two primary routes to Western Okaloosa County.”

CHELCO is a not-for-profit electric distribution cooperative serving more than 53,000 accounts in Walton, Okaloosa, Holmes and Santa Rosa counties.