“We have approximately 1.2 million customers, half of our total customer base, without power this morning,” said E.O. Ferrell, senior vice president of electric distribution for Duke Power, “This ice storm surpasses the damage from Hurricane Hugo in 1989, which had 696,000 outages.”

“We anticipate additional outages as the weight of the ice continues to bring down lines and trees. Our crews are working as quickly and as safely as possible to restore service to customers,” he said. “We’ve requested help from other utilities. It may take them a day or two to arrive due to weather conditions, making travel slow.” 

Customers are encouraged to continue to report power outages and downed lines using the 1-800-POWERON (1/800-769-3766) line. “It may take some time to get through due to the volume of calls. Some customers may get a message advising them to call a local office number. All of our telephone lines are overloaded.  We appreciate our customers’ patience and ask them to keep trying either 1-800-POWERON or the local office to report outages,” said Ferrell.

“If you have routine business with Duke Power such as service connections, please call back tomorrow for those service requests, if possible. We want to keep our lines open for customers to report power outages,” Ferrell advised.

Service may not be restored for an extended period of time. Duke Power customers may want to make other lodging arrangements due to the duration and severity of this storm.

Ferrell emphasized that customers should treat any downed line with extreme caution. Lines, trees, tree limbs or any structure that the lines may be touching should be considered energized.

Customers should not try to remove tree limbs from power lines. Report downed power lines to Duke Power, but don’t touch them.

Major areas affected as of 10 a.m. are:

For Charlotte area media, Duke Power will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. EST in the company’s Emergency Operations Facility at the Power Building’s First Street entrance.

WE WILL BE PROVIDING UPDATES ON OUR MEDIA OUTAGE UPDATE LINE AT 704-382-8333 ON THE FOLLOWING SCHEDULE:

6 a.m.

11 a.m.

4:30 p.m.

9:30 p.m.

Duke Power, a business unit of Duke Energy, is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities and provides safe, reliable, competitively priced electricity to approximately two million customers in North Carolina and South Carolina. Duke Power operates three nuclear generating stations, eight coal-fired stations, 31 hydroelectric stations and numerous combustion turbine units. Total system generating capability is approximately 19,300 megawatts. More information about Duke Power is available on the Internet at: www.dukepower.com.

Duke Energy is a diversified multinational energy company with an integrated network of energy assets and expertise. The company manages a dynamic portfolio of natural gas and electric supply, delivery and trading businesses – meeting the energy needs of customers throughout North America and in key markets around the world. Duke Energy, headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is a Fortune 500 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company is available on the Internet at: www.duke-energy.com.