Friday, June 16, brought a line of severe storms through the Southern Pine Electric service area during the pre-dawn hours. By the time the storms passed through the 11-county system, there were over 44,000 meters without power. Southern Pine immediately responded with in-house resources while requesting additional outside assistance from sister cooperatives and electrical and right-of-way contractors.
During the restoration efforts, daily storms continued to cause additional outages. Southern Pine’s operations workforce, with the help of over 300 line workers and right-of-way laborers, along with their supporting equipment, took part in the restoration effort over five days. All power was restored to those locations that could receive power by midnight on Tuesday, June 20. This event was the most significant outage event since Hurricane Katrina.
“This was a monumental effort for the Southern Pine team, our sister cooperatives, and the contractors. These outages were widespread in all 11 counties, which made restoration so difficult,” said Chris Rhodes, President & CEO of Southern Pine Electric. “We are so grateful to everyone for their patience and understanding as the crews worked in dangerous and hot conditions to restore all members. We greatly appreciate the mutual aid we received from nine of our sister co-ops and ten contractor groups.”
This restoration took the help of all Southern Pine employees, who worked through the Father’s Day weekend to restore power to our members. For more information about Southern Pine Electric, visit our website at southernpine.coop.
Southern Pine Electric is a member-owned, not-for-profit cooperative that distributes electricity to more than 69,500 members in 11 counties in central and south Mississippi. Headquartered in Taylorsville, Southern Pine has offices in Brandon, Newton, Hattiesburg, and New Hebron.
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