Rutherford Electric Membership Corporation sends crews to Virginia to help restore power after storm

Press release
from REMC

Rutherford Electric Membership Corporation Sends Line Crews to Virginia to Help Restore Power

Line crews from Rutherford EMC are joining forces with co-op line crews in Virginia to quickly restore power to the people in that state affected by a late-winter storm.

Crews from Rutherford EMC, based in Forest City, N.C., and Blue Ridge EMC, based in Lenoir, N.C., traveled north into Virginia early Thursday morning, March 7. A total of more than 30 electric cooperative line workers from North Carolina will help the Virginia co-ops with outage restoration efforts.

The deployment of crews is part of a mutual aid agreement shared between the nation’s nearly 1,000 electric cooperatives to help one another in times of emergency, such as natural disasters. Electric cooperatives across the country use the same line system engineering standards, which means line crews from any part of the country can quickly help sister cooperatives in restoration efforts.

“Electricity is critical to the way we live, and it’s important that people affected by this storm have power restored as quickly as possible,” said Dirk Burleson, vice president of member and corporate services for Rutherford EMC. “We are happy to help our fellow cooperatives and know that they would do the same for us, because it’s the cooperative way.”

Rutherford EMC serves approximately 67,500 members in 10 of the state’s 100 counties and maintains over7,100 miles of power lines.

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About Margaret Williams
Editor Margaret Williams first wrote for Xpress in 1994. An Alabama native, she has lived in Western North Carolina since 1987 and completed her Masters of Liberal Arts & Sciences from UNC-Asheville in 2016. Follow me @mvwilliams

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