Some Tennessee Power Outages Reaching Second Week

Pockets of Middle Tennessee residents are still without power — some heading into eight straight days on Monday — as a result of the winter storm.

The majority of outages are in the Upper Cumberland region, including Jackson, Putnam and Overton counties. There were under 2,000 outages as of Sunday evening, according to the Upper Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation:

• less than 100 outages in Gainesboro
• around 375 outages in Cookeville
• around 1,500 outages in Livingston

The group’s CEO, Jennifer Brogdon, described the snow and ice accumulation as every electric company’s “worst nightmare.” Some 5,000 miles of line and equipment became encased in ice.

“We brought in extra crews right away, but they could not make the progress they wanted to because of the continued snow and ice on our equipment,” said Brogdon. “Because of this extreme weather event, they spent most of last week making the same repairs to the same main lines.”

The electric company says the accumulations exceeded the strength of its poles and wires, causing numerous breaks.

Still, there has been progress and Brogdon hopes to make more strides in the coming days.

“It’s hard for me to give an exact timeline for complete restoration, but we are narrowing in on it,” she told WPLN News.