GULF SHORES — Linemen have poured into Alabama’s Gulf Coast to help with the recovery from Hurricane Sally in recent days, as an all-hands-on-deck effort to restore power to the people in Alabama’s coastal area is underway.
According to Poweroutage.us, a site that tracks power outages across the United States, 185,598 households in Alabama are currently without electricity, including 123,453 in Baldwin County and 56,020 in Mobile County. Some providers are not tracked by Poweroutage.us so the total number may be higher.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said on Friday that, to her knowledge, 4,000 electric professionals had been sent to Alabama from other states.
“It is just neighbors helping neighbors and states helping states, cause nobody expected this storm to be as strong as it was,” remarked Ivey about the display of generosity.
Mark Ingram, an executive with electricity provider Baldwin County EMC, told Yellowhammer News that in addition to the 90 linemen his company has working, 800 more are at the EMC’s disposal from a dozen other states including as far as Illinois and Texas.
Alabama Power Company tweeted that lineworkers from 14 states were assisting their crews on Friday.
Utility workers and lineworkers from 14 states, including our friends at @MS_Power, are working alongside our crews to restore service following Hurricane Sally. pic.twitter.com/ntY10yCbNT
— Alabama Power (@alabamapower) September 18, 2020
As of 12:45 p.m. on Friday, Baldwin EMC had the most customers without power of any provider, followed by Alabama Power and Riviera Utilities.
“The real focus of our efforts is going to have to be here in Baldwin County,” U.S. Representative Bradley Byrne (AL-01) said at a press conference on Friday. Byrne’s congressional district encompasses all of the hardest-hit counties in the state.
Byrne also cautioned that some amount of citizens may be without power for “a long time” due to the sheer number of trees that fell during the slow-moving Hurricane Salley.
Evidence of the all-out effort to restore power was evident along the main roadway through Baldwin County on Friday morning.
Yellowhammer News witnessed a procession of several trucks from Carolina Power, a company headquartered in Fayetteville, NC.
Several trucks from Carolina Power just rolled through here in Baldwin County. Headed to help.
Website says the company is based in Fayetteville, NC. pic.twitter.com/vLflMhWE0I
— Henry Thornton (@HenryThornton95) September 18, 2020
Help also came from Mississippi, as a shipment of new utility poles could be spotted in the parking lot of a closed bowling alley.
Giving a new light to the term SEC linemen, a shipment of more utility poles on a truck with license plates from Georgia was also spotted.
Yellowhammer News is on the ground in the Gulf Coast, so expect more updates later in the afternoon.
Henry Thornton is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can contact him by email: henry@new-yhn.local or on Twitter @HenryThornton95
