ISABEL - Storm of 2003 September 19, 2003 The Beaufort News Isabel Claims One, Floods Homes Utilities fare better than in the past – Utility services fared better than during storms in the past in most places, with down east communities again being the hardest hit by Hurricane Isabel. Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative had about 60 workers at substations in Otway and Atlantic once roadways were cleared this morning. Gary Zajac, CCEC vice president of marketing and external affairs said about 300 customers served by the Atlantic substation were without power, and another 766 served out of the Otway substation lost power during the storm. “Yesterday, we couldn’t get there because of the flooding,” Mr. Zajac said this morning. “All the rest of the substations are up.” Nonetheless, he said, another 300 to 400 other customers were without power for various reasons, but crews were tracking those outages and restoring power first thing today. “Right now, we are in outstanding condition,” Mr. Zajac said this morning. Progress Energy crews restored power to 175,000 of its customers overnight. As of 11 this morning, 134,500 Progress Energy customers were still without power down from a peak of 420,000 at 7 p.m. on Thursday. Hardest hit counties include Wake with 79,000 outages. About 8000 Carteret County customers have reported power outages.
Progress Energy spokesman Will Edgar said that number will likely rise as customers in coastal or heavily damages areas who were not immediately able to get to their homes determine if they have power. “Hopefully, we’ll have a sense of that later today as people get out to assess their hurricane damage,” Mr. Edgar said.
Progress Energy has approximately