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Local Voices

Cobb EMC: Bright spot in the storm

Crews offer storm aid to Jefferson Energy Cooperative and Coweta-Fayette EMC

Cobb EMC is proud to have sent crews and trucks to Jefferson Energy Cooperative and Coweta-Fayette EMC. Our teams worked alongside their crews and other contractors to help restore power to their members.

Led by Overhead Line Superintendent Tony Jordan, 32 operations and fleet employees worked through the night at Coweta-Fayette EMC. After an 8-hour break to sleep, they were back at it again. Phillip Turner, Associate Vice President of safety worked alongside our crews to assist them with all safety-related issues.

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Jefferson Energy Cooperative suffered extreme weather and at one point had more than 80 percent of their members without power. Twenty-six Cobb EMC trucks and 39 men, including Ronald Culver from the co-op’s safety team, rolled out to bring aid to Jefferson.

We’re thankful to report all of our employees returned home safely.

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“Cobb EMC must be doing something right”

Media, members applaud employees for storm preparation and quick work.

We at Cobb EMC would like to extend a sincere thank you to our employees who worked around the clock during the February storm, logging more than 14,459 hours, to keep power up-and-running for our members.

Preparation began the Sunday before the Tuesday storm. Our operations team brought in 123 outside contractors and trucks for the event. Thirty call center employees answered 1,500 calls during the 2,100 hours they worked, and staff worked behind-the-scenes to keep all systems running. To keep members informed of progress, our communications team proactively worked with media and posted hourly updates to Cobb EMC’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

Line foreman David Roesch put it best, “We know what to do. We’ve been through it over and over. We know what we’ve got to do to get ready for it… It’s just another storm.”

As hours passed and ice creeped in, scenes from our Marietta headquarters included caterers bringing in meals for those on-call and employees sleeping on air mattresses so each shift could stay alert and prepared.

New waves of sleet brought outages with them, and trees on lines continued to cause issues. Despite this, Cobb EMC’s system held up well: 11,573 members experienced momentary outages, but only 5,664 outages were sustained. The average restoration time was less than one hour, and the longest any member was without power was less than four hours.

Additionally, we were thankful to have had help from Choctawhatchee Electric Cooperative, Services Incorporated, West Florida Electric Cooperative, Central Alabama Electric Cooperative, T&D Solutions, LLC, Pike Corporation, Kendall and Adams Electric, Inc.

We still can't get over the outpouring of kind words, patience and support members showed us through Facebook likes and comments. It makes us proud to be a part of the EMC family and to serve each and every member.

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