CREWE, Va – On the evening of Thursday, October 11, remnants of Hurricane Michael moved through the majority of the counties served by Southside Electric Cooperative (SEC), bringing extremely high winds, heavy rains and flooding — leaving devastation in its wake.
As of 9 AM, approximately 31,000 SEC members are without power. At the storm’s peak, over 40,000 members were impacted, making this the Cooperative’s most significant outage event since Hurricane Irene in 2011 (with 26,000 outages).
As a result of the number of downed trees and broken poles, the outage restoration process is expected to take several days. Due to the extent of the damage, SEC encourages members to prepare for several days without electricity.

Co-op crews from neighboring states will arrive Friday to assist SEC with the extensive restoration process.

At this time, SEC is not able to offer estimated times of restoration until all damages have been assessed. Crews are likely to discover additional broken poles and downed wire during the assessment.
As always, please stay away from any downed power lines and equipment. Treat all damaged electrical infrastructure as if it is energized.
To report outages, please call: 1-866-878-5514. Due to extremely high call volume and damaged phone lines near SEC headquarters office, this number may take multiple attempts to reach the system. An alternate number is available at (434) 309-2700. Another option for outage reporting is through SEC’s TextPower service. Members who are enrolled can text #out to 866-878-5514.

If you are unable to report your outage, rest assured that SEC has alternate methods to identify accounts without power.

SEC has begun making repairs and restoring outages, starting with the transmission lines that feed substations. Once those are repaired, crews will move to substations, main feeders, tap lines and services. During this restoration process, individual outages will be identified using an advanced meter infrastructure.

Southside Electric Cooperative is a not-for-profit, member-owned electric cooperative that serves more than 56,000 homes and businesses in portions of 18 counties in central and southern Virginia. Headquartered in Crewe, SEC has district offices in Altavista, Crewe, Dinwiddie and Powhatan. For more information,
visit www.sec.coop.