In the midst of trying to help, sometimes our actions can do more harm than good.
June brought one of the worst storms our service territory has ever experienced. Downed trees and power lines left some members without power for up to three days.
While we appreciate your patience and understanding as our employees worked tirelessly to restore your power, we experienced a few situations where a bit of education could have gone a long way.
Here are some reminders we’d like to share with you to be prepared the next time a storm rolls through:
- Do not go near downed power lines. While we appreciate the impulse to help, we do not want our members trying to assist us by trimming trees and branches near power lines in an effort to restore power faster. There is no way to tell whether a line is energized or not, and LaGrange County REMC wants to keep you safe from the potential of harming yourself or others.
- Some of our members keep a generator on hand in case the power goes out. LaGrange County REMC reminds you to never connect your generator directly to your home’s wiring. If you do, it can backfeed into the power lines connected to your home and could harm, or even kill, a lineman who may be working to repair outages many miles away.
- Please report an outage at your home or business by calling our office at 877-463-7165, where we’re available 24/7. We had a few members try to alert us to an outage by email, and though we appreciate the effort, our email is only checked during business hours, so we weren’t able to document those reports in a timely manner.
Storms of this magnitude may not happen very often, but it’s always best to be prepared, so you can keep yourself, and others, safe.
