This past weekend, the state of Georgia, along with other Southeast and East Coast states, was affected by Winter Storm Fern, which caused extremely low temperatures, icy conditions, and widespread outages in some areas. Preparations for the storm began on Friday, January 16, with operations preparing crews and equipment for the winter storm.

On Sunday, January 25, approximately 2,200 members experienced outages at our peak. Across our entire system, only one broken pole was reported, thanks to our proactive planning and ongoing commitment to reliability and restoring outages quickly. Thank you to our Cobb EMC employees across the cooperative who worked in the days before, during, and after Winter Storm Fern to serve our members. This was a team effort, and their coordinated efforts ensured that we remain ready to respond, even in challenging conditions.

While we are thankful to have avoided major impacts and are fortunate that our system remains stable, many of our neighboring EMCs continue to face significant outages. To support their restoration efforts, we deployed 30 of our linemen on January 27 to assist Habersham EMC as they work to safely restore power. Their system suffered extensive damage related to Winter Storm Fern, including 54 broken poles, and with our crews, has increased the number of people working on restoration efforts to 520.

We are proud to practice the cooperative principle of Cooperation Across Cooperatives and to assist our fellow cooperatives in their time of need. Please keep our crews in your thoughts as they assist power restoration efforts.