MADISON COUNTY, N.C. (WLOS) — Duke Energy is making progress. As of Tuesday, Oct. 8, nearly 84,000 customers were still without power, but another 2.6 million customers had been restored.
Crews completed construction on a third temporary substation near Marshall on Tuesday morning, restoring power for nearly 1,000 customers in Madison County who have had intermittent power for the last week.
“Come on in,” said Cassie Franklin, as the front door opened at the Smokey Mountain Diner.
It has been 11 days since she uttered that phrase.
“You going to take it to go or eat in?” Franklin asked a customer who strolled in.
The diner, a 30-year fixture in Hot Springs, as of Tuesday, had new energy after the storm caused intermittent outages and closed the diner for the last 10 days.
“For us, it seems like it’s been an eternity because here we’re open six days a week and then we have people we see every day and we haven’t seen them in a while,” said Franklin.
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The outage cost the restaurant thousands in spoiled food.
Loss of food is nothing compared to loss of life,” said Franklin, who has been working in friends’ kitchens to feed the community.
Now, they are happy to have the open sign lit and hot food on the table.
“Can I get you anything else?” asked Franklin.
But not every business in Hot Springs is ready. Others need a new foundation or more after Spring Creek spilled its banks. It will be some time before the downtown is ready for power.
It’s going to be a while. They’ve got to rebuild before they can receive power,” said Duke Energy spokesman Bill Norton.
Restoring the Marshall substation means lights on for another 1,000 Madison County customers.
However, it is the variety of repairs that presents a challenge for Duke Energy. In Black Mountain and Swannanoa, the entire transmission infrastructure must be rebuilt.
DUKE ENERGY USES HELICOPTERS TO FLY IN POWER POLES FOR REPAIRS
“It’s required more manpower, more rebuilding of core lines, transmission lines… Normally we’d be done with the restoration process by now,” said Norton.
Counties to the North need utility poles. A delivery was on the way.
“We’ve got communities where we can’t reach them right now so we’re flying in new power poles by helicopter,” said Norton.
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With Hurricane Milton churning in the Gulf, another Duke Energy community, Tampa, is bracing for what could be a similar hit. But mountain residents should not be worried, as resources are here to stay.
We are going to be fighting a two-front battle if you will, but we have separate resources down in Florida. We’re going to remain fully staffed here in Western North Carolina,” said Norton.
On Tuesday, Duke Energy announced it would set up a command center in Western North Carolina to serve as the company’s base of operations while workers continue building the necessary infrastructure until everyone ends up like the Smokey Mountain Diner, ready for hot meals again.
We just want to be a light to the community. We want to be able to help them,” said Franklin.
Duke Energy also established a dedicated webpageto provide the latest information and resources for impacted customers in Western North Carolina. The page currently includes a map of the repair and rebuild zones, common questions and answers and more.