Local organizations responding to Helene
A broken power pole in South Carolina being attended to by power crews from the Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative. (Courtesy: SVEC)
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- Despite Chattanooga missing the brunt of Hurricane Helene, it is still having a large impact on the Tennessee Valley.
CBS News currently has confirmed at least one hundred and 18 fatalities due to the storm, with the vast majority of those in the Carolinas.
Local crews have responded to portions of Northeast Tennessee, the western Carolinas, and Southern Georgia that were hit hardest by the storm.
They have performed rescues, cleared roadways, and are working on restoring the power grid to the millions without power across the Southeast.
This comes as TVA is preparing for a surge of water along the Tennessee River thanks to 30 inches of rain in the mountains.
Scott Fielder with TVA says, “Don’t approach the dams as we will be releasing water more and more over the next week.”
The Chickamauga Dam currently is using all floodgates to spill well over 600-thousand gallons of water per second, which will increase to eight hundred thousand gallons per second starting tomorrow.
While flooding is not expected in the Chattanooga area, boaters are being asked to reconsider any plans to be on the water.
Fielder said, “What we do is that we open up the gates and move that through the system, but what’s dangerous for folks is that if you’re out on a boat and going very fast, don’t run into this debris.”
Meanwhile, other local agencies have responded to the heavy damaged areas to our south and east.
They have performed rescues, cleared roadways, and are working on restoring the power grid to the millions without power across the Southeast.
One of those agencies is the Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative (SVEC) , who have sent three line crews to upstate South Carolina, where they have identified at least five hundred power poles that will need to be completely rebuilt.
Mike Partin, the CEO of SVEC, said, “It’s up one side of a mountain and down the other side. The lines go cross-country from point to point, and that’s a challenge in itself. Those folks up there are using drones and helicopters ahead of these crews assessing the damage, and then these crews a lot of the time have to carry their equipment in, they have to walk these lines, and it’s just going to take a lot of time.”
Partin says storms like this are a reminder to be prepared for the worst case scenario as a slight change in the path of Helene would have placed it over our area.
He recommends, “If folks are calling for bad weather in our area here, it may be an ice storm coming up sometime this winter, have supplies, have some backup. Also with people on oxygen, have backup oxygen too, be prepared for a several day outage. Don’t be just at the mercy of the world out there.”
Partin says he expects those crews to be in South Carolina for at least a week.
No commercial traffic will be allowed through the Tennessee River Gorge as the locks at Chickamauga and other dams will be closed.
