Many in eastern Kentucky remain without power and Kentucky Power, the electric provider for much of the area says currently there are more than 21,000 customers without power, with the majority of customers in Breathitt, Leslie, Knott, Letcher and Perry counties. Many areas remain inaccessible by the crews, hampering restoration efforts. In many areas, they are still waiting for water to recede and debris left behind from flooding to be cleared, as well as blocked and washed out roads from high water, mud slides and downed trees, all hindering efforts to do damage assessments.
More than 450 Kentucky Power personnel and Crews are finding damage to substations along with numerous broken poles and spans of wire. Additional out-of-state resources will be joined the restoration efforts today. In some areas, drone technology is being used to aid in damage assessment which will expedite restoration once those areas are accessible.
This will be a multi-day restoration event most likely extending into early next week when priorities will be given to hospitals, first responders, emergency shelters and other public utilities. After that, crews address residential and business/commercial customers. Outages that affect higher numbers of customers without power are typically addressed before outages affecting fewer customers. The idea is to restore service to the greatest number of customers as quickly as possible. So the more isolated the area, the longer to get power restored.
