Santee Electric Cooperative made additional progress with power restoration today. About 4,000 more members can rest a little more comfortably tonight. We estimate that there were about 300 broken poles on the system. One hundred fifty new poles have been sent out of the Kingstree facility alone, which does not account for the number of poles that have been replaced using materials from the other four pole yards in our service territory.

We would like to encourage members to take all generators offline if they notice crews working in their area for safety reasons.

Members contacting the office asking for service to be cut for repairs are advised to get licensed electricians to do the repairs.

Line crews are now working on making repairs to individual services. This is a very hard and time consuming job and we ask that our members not make them stop what they are doing to answer questions because this will slow down their progress.

Another problem we face is misinformation and rumors spreading throughout our membership. Please feel free to call 1888-239-2800 or 1-800-922-1604 and ask us any questions you may have instead of interrupting line crews or relying on second hand information.

Santee Electric Cooperative appreciates your patience as we work diligently to restore power to all of our members affected by last week's ice storm.