Power restored after weekend storm

Published 10:00 am Tuesday, January 24, 2017

LIVE OAK — While tornadoes swept through South Georgia on Sunday, North Florida escaped with just severe weather that left some without power.

According to Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative, nearly 11,000 of their 25,000 customers were without power at some point, with a peak of 7,000 blacked out. Suwannee County had an estimated 4,620 without power during the peak outage with Hamilton and Lafayette counties each having around 1,000 out of power.

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By Monday night, all power had been restored to SVEC members affected by the storm, according to spokesman Jon Little.

Most had power back by Monday morning. Through work during the night, SVEC restored power to nearly 5,700 of those customers by Monday morning with the largest outage remaining in the southeast corner of Lafayette County.

As off noon Monday, Jon Little said power had been restored to all but about 900 customers — with 653 of those in Suwannee County. Hamilton County had 75 still without power and Lafayette had 34 with 20-25 crews from SVEC and Musgrove Construction, Inc., in the field Monday, restoring power as quickly and safely as possible.

“We understand that this has been a major inconvenience for our members who are still without power, and wish to thank everyone again for their patience and understanding,” Little said, adding that with strong winds still in the area, additional outages were still possible.

According to county officials, there was no injuries, deaths or structural damage from the storm in Suwannee, Hamilton and Lafayette counties. Rather, power lines and trees were down with some roads blocked.

“We lucked out as far as that,” Suwannee County Sheriff Sam St. John said of escaping major damage.

Little added: “High winds, trees and electric lines don’t make a good combination.”