Santee Electric Cooperative continues to make progress in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. The cooperative now has 41,056 members without electricity. There are 7,365 outages in Clarendon County, 9,468 in Florence County, 12,824 in Georgetown County and 11,399 in Williamsburg County who do not have electricity. 

Starting the day with 42,896 members without electricity, this may not seem like progress but today's work is significant according to Adrel Langley, Santee Electric Cooperative Manager of Community Relations.

Crews began doing assessments before daylight and moved into damaged areas they could reach to make repairs to primary power lines.

Even with more than 100 men helping, it is slow going for crews who literally cut their way down roads to determine the type of damage to the power system.

'An important thing to remember is that our power lines are no good without electricity to flow through them,' Langley said. 'Only 15 of our 36 substations are energized. For a distribution cooperative like Santee Electric, power restoration begins at the substation where crews ride out each line working their way to the end.'

With no control over when transmission is restored or specific details on all damages, Santee Electric Cooperative cannot give any estimates of when power will be restored.

'We would like to thank all of our wonderful members who have sent prayers and kind words to our linemen through social media,' Langley added.

Santee Electric Co-op serves the rural parts of Clarendon, Florence, Georgetown and Williamsburg Counties. Outage maps can be viewed at www.santee.org. Outages can be reported at www.santee.org, on the SmartHub app, using TextPower or at 1-888-239-2300. A map of cooperative outages across the state can be found at https://outages.ecsc.org/outages/maps