Proactive in preparation

September is National Preparedness Month

This time last year, the name “Helene” was on everyone’s mind.

September 27 marks one-year since Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction through the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida. The storm also brought damage to numerous electric co-ops in these states. Once we wrapped up our own restoration efforts here at home, we sent a crew to southeast Georgia to help a co-op who had lost nearly 100% of their system.

Think about that for just a second. The distribution system that had taken this co-op over 85 years to build and maintain was gone in an instant. And even though they were starting from scratch in many places, they were expected to restore power to their members in a relatively short amount of time. A tall task to be sure, but one that over a thousand lineworkers from across the country helped accomplish, including some of Salt River’s own.

After watching the news and hearing from our crews on what they saw, I hope we never experience that level of devastation here at Salt River Electric. But examples like this help reinforce our preparedness efforts, a timely reminder as we recognize National Preparedness Month.

For those of us here at Salt River, being prepared can mean many different things. We are proactive with year-round preventative maintenance tasks, such as tree trimming, vegetation management and infrastructure upgrades. When storms do hit, our crews have the tools, training and equipment needed to get the lights back on as quickly and safely as possible. For our members, preparedness means staying up to date on changing weather conditions and visiting the Outage Information Center on our website for the important information you need to stay safe and comfortable should a prolonged outage occur.

One recommendation I’d make is to create an emergency kit for your family and have it ready to go at all times. It’s critical to ensure you and your family’s safety, as well as peace of mind. We’ll keep you informed about restoration efforts by posting frequently on our Facebook page, and by maintaining our online outage map at outage.srelectric.com.

I hope we all get to enjoy some beautiful fall weather beginning this month. But if storm clouds do appear, just know that your co-op is prepared.

And we hope you are, too.