Co-op employees and members,

In less than 18 months, our co-op has responded to the worst hurricane our system has ever faced and our first ice storm since 2005. Hurricane Helene and Winter Storm Fern brought trying times for our entire community, but our employees and membership have responded to these natural disasters with resiliency.

Without question, Blue Ridge Electric Co-op sustained the most damage from Winter Storm Fern in the entire state of South Carolina. I’m happy to write that our storm response has come to a close, five days after outages began on Sunday, January 25. Clean-up and patchwork will continue over the coming weeks.

I believe we were even better prepared for Fern’s arrival, thanks to the valuable lessons learned from Helene. Our co-op mobilized reinforcements rapidly after the storm track spared others. We matched the manpower we had in the field of a two-week response to Helene in just three days. Thankfully, we saw more sleet accumulate initially. That shifted to freezing rain on Sunday afternoon. It was then that the outages rolled in. We were holding steady at around 3,000 members without service, and that jumped to 25,000 in 90 minutes.

Significant portions of our service territory recorded at least a half-inch of ice, all the way up to three-quarters of an inch. This matched or exceeded 2005, which took us seven days to address.

I want to thank all our employees for their dedication and hard work, and our membership for their patience and support. It’s important for me to highlight that no workers were injured in either Helene or Fern recovery efforts. That includes what could’ve been a tragic incident Sunday afternoon, when two of our linemen were on a call and a tree collapsed, crushing their service truck. It’s a miracle they were unharmed. We have all been blessed to see these workers return home to their loved ones safely.

Finally, thank you to our numerous sister co-ops from across our state - and a large number of contract crews - who rallied to restore power to the membership. This is the “cooperative advantage,” a massive benefit that allows us to lean on other co-ops for mutual aid if they’ve been able to avoid the damage of natural disasters.

Here’s to hoping for a quiet rest of the winter.

Cooperatively Yours,

Jim Lovinggood

CEO and President | Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative