Santee Cooper Employees Power through Hurricane Dorian
Staff Report From South Carolina CEO
Friday, September 13th, 2019
Last week 1 million people were ordered to evacuate South Carolina and Georgia in preparation for Hurricane Dorian. While families along the coast packed up their cars, or hunkered down in their homes, Santee Cooper employees stood on standby, ready to restore power in the hurricane’s aftermath.
Determined to stay ahead of the storm, members of the Corporate Incident Management Team (CIMT) met twice daily giving updates on preparation tasks, hurricane status, number of outages and restoration progress--among many other efforts.
Santee Cooper employees in all departments worked around the clock to provide customer support, communicate updates and most importantly, bring back the power. Crews of linemen committed to working around the clock in alternating 12-hour shifts, until all customers were back on, and our employees in generation were hard at work making sure electricity was being produced.
Their work didn’t go unnoticed, as hundreds of comments rolled in on Santee Cooper’s social media thanking them for their dedication and hard work. By Friday afternoon, our crews were able to restore power to more than 90% of the 49,489 customers who lost service.
Teamwork was vital, and support from about 60 public power crews from other areas of South Carolina, as well as from Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, ensured our crews were able serve our customers in the most efficient way possible.