Break in storms allows earlier completion of “Frances” outages; Savannah storm team deployed to assist Georgia Power in Dublin

After several days of fighting a see-saw battle with the powerful outer edges of Hurricane Frances, a break in the storms allowed the company to clear up the remaining outages overnight Tuesday.

As large jobs were completed, resources were focused on remaining trouble spots. Figures dropped quickly from some 2000 at 6 p.m. to less than 200 by mid-evening and around 70 by midnight.

A small number of new outages occurred in the early morning hours of Wednesday under continued windy conditions. By daylight Wednesday, those were the only outages remaining.

A Savannah Electric storm team, previously scheduled to travel to Florida on Monday or Tuesday, was delayed in order to restore power to local customers. With the earlier than expected completion of local outages, however, the departure date and destination were reevaluated overnight.

As a result, a 19-person storm team left Savannah early Wednesday morning to assist Savannah Electric’s sister company, Georgia Power, also recovering from heavy storm damage. Their initial assignment is in the Dublin, Georgia area.

Savannah Electric released 23 of its local contract employees from Pike Electric for storm duty with Georgia Power. Eighteen other outside contractors, brought in for storm restoration, have also been released for storm duty elsewhere.

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