Staff Reports
About seven or eight Duke Energy employees from Columbus will be joining a caravan of the utilities trucks heading south as the electric company deploys about 700 people from its Midwest operations to help with potential damage from Hurricane Dorian.
Crews from this area are staging at 7 a.m. today at the Edinburgh Premium Outlets and driving to Macon, Georgia, where they will wait until the hurricane reaches the U.S. coastline and it is determined where help is most needed, said Chip Orben, Duke Energy spokesman.
The utility is sending assessors, engineers, equipment operators, line persons for both transmission and distribution and back office and support personnel, Orben said.
In addition to the Edinburgh staging area, crews will also be departing this morning from:
Aurora
Bedford
Clarksville
Princeton
Shelbyville
Sullivan
Interstate 70 at Cloverdale exit
Once the crews reach Macon, Georgia tonight, they will await further instructions as to where they will be deployed, either in Florida or the Carolinas, depending on the track of hurricane and level of damage, Duke officials said.
It’s unknown at this point how long crews will be deployed, but Orben said most Duke employees have been advised to plan on at least two weeks.
Duke Energy’s service area includes Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
Orben said although the crews are staging in the south at this time, the Midwest will also be in the hurricane remnant’s crosshairs after landfall.
“The storm will be moving this way,” he said.
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For updates on power outages in Duke Energy’s service area, visit:
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