Update from Western Kentucky

My brother Chuck works for the Jackson Purchase Energy Co-op in Paducah -- about 4 hours from Lexington. He just sent our family this update as we hadn't heard from him in a few days. I know some of you all may have friends in the area and would appreciate the update. Sounds horrific.

Just wanted to let you guys know the status down here. Angela and Josh are fortunate enough to have power this morning. They are one of the only people in Graves County with power. We are fortunate to live near the hospital and County High School. The high school is a designated shelter and power restoration was a high priority for them and the hospital. They are telling the rest of the county to plan for 30 days without power and more if an individual service is affected. I refer to Josh and Angela as they because other than going home for a couple of hours to check on them I have been here at the office……sleeping for an hour or two on the floor of my office. We lost nearly all our trees but none hit the house. I have probably a week worth of chain sawing to do when things quiet down. Joni and Sara are in the city and if they aren’t on, they should be within the week maybe even in the next day or so.

We are hoping to have a majority of our system on by the end of next week but it will probably be 30 days for some folks. We alone have 150 extra workers from the gulf shore in Alabama to Michigan. Some of the folks we helped out in Louisiana are here to return the favor. We normally run about 30 line workers so this is quite a lot of people to house and feed. Plus many of our regular workers have had trees damage their house…..work comes first so they have been having their spouses and family manage as best as they can. We secured a load of generators for their families so they can get some power to keep some things going without having to worry about closing off their houses where trees have come through.

I just had the President of our bank hand deliver some cash to us……nice to be able to call his cell phone, tell them we need cash to feed people and have them open up the bank and bring the money to us.

No injuries yet with our workers; probably because no power is getting to us. Only a few people that have been found dead in their house from exposure or failure of medical equipment. 911 was down for several days so medical cases weren’t able to summon help and in some cases they couldn’t be reached because of trees blocking roads. Even helicopters were banished the first couple of days because of weather conditions. Some veterans of Gustav and Katrina are saying this is much worse, save the mostly lack of home damage.

The judge executive for one of our neighboring counties, Crittenden, has told people to close their houses and not come back for two months. Hard to believe people’s jobs will be carried that long and the businesses there will be hard pressed to survive.

Chuck Williamson