Power restoration efforts continue into weekend

Listen to this article

Utilities serving South Carolina plan to have crews work throughout Friday, continuing to restore power knocked out along the coast by Hurricane Dorian.

After skirting the S.C. coast on Thursday, the storm has moved into North Carolina. Dorian caused coastal flooding, blew down limbs and trees and caused property damage.

Gov. Henry McMaster lifted evacuation orders for all S.C. counties Friday morning and restored local school districts' authority to determine closings. All state government offices will operate normally on Monday, the governor's office said in a news release.

Santee Cooper reported about 25,000 commercial and residential customers lost power Thursday in the hurricane, though it restored power to all but 4,500 of them by Thursday afternoon. The state-owned utility said in a news release that its crews will continue to work into Friday to restore power.

The eastern portion of Santee Cooper’s transmission system was damaged in the storm. That system delivers power to several city-owned electric utilities and the state’s electric cooperatives. Service was interrupted to about 15% of delivery points serving Berkeley, Edisto, Palmetto and Santee electric cooperatives Thursday but has since been restored, the utility said.

Transmission service serving the city of Georgetown was also briefly interrupted and restored. Click here to see the outage map. To report an outage, call 888-769-7688.

Dominion Energy South Carolina said the Category 3 hurricane caused widespread outages in its coastal service territory. At 7 a.m. Thursday, Dominion Energy tweeted it had more than 128,000 customers without power. By 12:40 p.m., that number grew to more than 165,200. As of Friday morning, 90,698 Dominion customers were blacked out.

Dominion Energy S.C. said in a news release Thursday that restoring power to facilities critical to public health and safety, such as hospitals, is a priority in the repair process. Crews will have to assess damage to the electric system and clear debris first, then make repairs to parts of the system that affect the largest number of customers, such as power plants, transmission facilities and substations.

“The restoration process takes time — sometimes several days — as many factors, such as current weather conditions, downed trees and power lines and flooding, can affect our ability to safely access areas where damaged infrastructure may be located," said Keller Kissam, Dominion Energy South Carolina's president of electric operations. "We appreciate our customers’ patience throughout the restoration process."

The Dominion customers without power are in Charleston, Dorchester, Colleton and Beaufort counties. Click here for Dominion Energy SC outages or call 888-333-4465 to report an outage.

Dominion said earlier this week that it had about 2,000 employees and contract crew members, including line workers and damage assessors, ready to deploy after the storm. Santee Cooper said it had more than 800 workers available, with the ability to add more contract crews if necessary.

As of 1:30 p.m. Thursday, the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina reported 73,314 outages in its service areas. Most were reported in Beaufort, Berkeley, Charleston, Clarendon, Colleton, Dorchester, Georgetown, Orangeburg, Williamsburg and Horry counties. As of Friday morning, 52,315 customers remained without power.

Click here for more electric cooperatives outage information.

Duke Energy reported about 3,000 customers without power in South Carolina on Friday morning.

Several Midlands school districts closed on Thursday as the storm advanced, including Richland One and Two, Lexington Two, Three and Four and Lexington-Richland Five. The University of South Carolina did not cancel classes, and Richland County government offices remained open.

S.C. Emergency Management Division Director Kim Stenson said that some damage to residential and business buildings has been reported so far but that the division has not received reports of specific infrastructure damage. Blocked roads and localized flooding were reported along the coast on Thursday. The S.C. DOT reports some roads are covered with water in Georgetown, Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach.

The Department of Health and Environmental Control said more than 150 ambulances were deployed to help evacuate hospitals and nursing homes. DHEC also reported during McMaster's Thursday afternoon news conference that 35 emergency shelters are open statewide, with 2,484 residents staying in them.

The coastal region experienced heavy rain and high winds throughout Thursday and into the night. Tornadoes were confirmed in North Myrtle Beach and Little River.