September 14, 2018
ASHLAND, Ky., September 14, 2018 – As Hurricane Florence made landfall in the Carolinas on Friday, Kentucky Power continued preparing for potential weekend outages. Remnants of the storm are forecast to bring heavy rains and winds up to 40 miles an hour to eastern Kentucky beginning Sunday.
“We are expecting customers in the more mountainous regions of eastern Kentucky to be most affected by the storm,” said Everett Phillips, managing director of region distribution services. “With the expected heavy rain, the ground will be saturated. That type of situation can allow trees to topple more easily onto our lines. Our employees and contractors are ready to respond should outages occur.”
Electric companies in the path of Hurricane Florence further south of Kentucky activated their emergency response plans earlier this week. They pre-positioned equipment, resources and crews to prepare for power outages and to speed damage assessment and recovery efforts once the storm made landfall. Kentucky Power did not send crews to assist because of uncertainty of how the storm may affect electrical facilities in eastern Kentucky. Should outages be minimal in eastern Kentucky once Florence arrives, Kentucky Power will make its crews available to assist harder hit areas, Phillips said.
“We always want to help other electric companies when we can because mutual assistance is essential and allows each utility company to respond quickly at times like this,” Phillips said. “Right now, we are told our peers have adequate help. We are being cautious until we know how the storm will affect eastern Kentucky. We take our local responsibility seriously and want to ensure we have staff to take care of our customers.”
Kentucky Power customers can get specific information about the outages affecting their accounts via text message and/or email by subscribing to Kentucky Power outage alerts. To sign up, please visit https://kentuckypower.com/alerts. You can report an outage, check outage status, manage your accounts and more by downloading the Kentucky Power mobile app at https://kentuckypower.com/account/app/. The app is free in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. A snapshot view of current outages is available at https://kentuckypower.com/outages.
Kentucky Power encourages its customers to take steps anytime a storm is in the forecast. Customers can prepare for potential outages by assembling an emergency kit with flashlights and fresh batteries; candles, matches, or lighters; water for drinking and cooking; canned goods and a manual can opener; medications; and other supplies. A mobile cell phone charger also is useful.
Kentucky Power, based in Ashland, provides service to about 168,000 customers in 20 eastern Kentucky counties. It is an operating company in the American Electric Power system.
