Storm crews respond to outages, assist Gulf Power in restoration efforts

It’s a busy start to the week for Mississippi Power storm crews. After helping to safely and efficiently restore electricity to 3,000 customers following Monday’s severe weather, 40 linemen and support personnel from the Coast Division geared up and headed east to assist Gulf Power crews.

The Mississippi Power team is scheduled to work through Tuesday evening and return sometime on Wednesday.

Monday’s turbulent weather spawned several possible tornadoes in Central Mississippi and caused widespread outages all across the company’s service territory. In a 23-hour period beginning early Monday, the company experienced approximately 7,950 outages due to high wind, lightning and broken tree limbs.

According to the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center website, 122 severe weather events were reported during that same time frame.

The storm system moved east and knocked out electricity to 25,000 Gulf Power customers. Crews from Alabama Power and Georgia Power are also assisting in those restoration efforts that include resetting a large number of broken utility poles.

By early Tuesday morning, just 5,000 Gulf Power customers remained without service, and all Gulf Power Customers who could receive electricity were back online by that afternoon.

The Mississippi Power crew returned home safely Wednesday morning.