OUTAGES: More than 160,000 without power

Hydro team at work

September 4, 2019 at 6:26 PM EDT - Updated September 5 at 7:26 AM

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Early Thursday morning, electric utilities and co-ops across the Lowcountry reported more than 100,000 customers without power as Hurricane Dorian battered the Lowcountry.

WATCH LIVE:Continuing coverage of Hurricane Dorian

At 7:25 a.m., the most outages by county were reported in Charleston County where the number of the county’s power customers passed the 40 percent mark. In Beaufort County, a third of customers were in the dark.

More than a quarter of Dorchester County customers and more than 16% of Colleton County customers and more than were without power.

Dominion Energy spokesman Paul Fischer said they were expecting similar outages to Hurricane Matthew in 2016, which was their most significant weather event since Hurricane Hugo. Matthew interrupted power to 290,000 customers.

The following outages have been reported:

Dominion Energy

  • Beaufort County: 16,089
  • Berkeley County: 4,725
  • Charleston County: 77,022
  • Colleton: 3,669
  • Dorchester: 26,619

Berkeley Electric Cooperative

  • Charleston County: 22,061
  • Berkeley County: 16,127
  • Dorchester County: 3,845

Coastal Electric Cooperative

  • Colleton County: 929
  • Dorchester County: 0

Edisto Electric Cooperative

  • Dorchester County: 1,740

Santee Cooper Cooperative

  • Berkeley County: 1,086
  • Georgetown County: 6,461

Santee Electric Cooperative

  • Georgetown County: 2,280
  • Williamsburg County: 811

Dominion Energy said its crews will begin assessing damage and restoring power as soon as the storm passes with the a top priority on facilities critical to public health and safety, such as hospitals, fire and police departments, and water treatment systems. Crews then work to return service to the largest number of residential and business customers in the shortest amount of time. Once major repairs are completed, individual homes and smaller groups of customers are restored.

The quickest and most efficient way for customers in South Carolina to notify Dominion Energy of a power outage is to report it online atwww.DominionEnergySC.com, using a mobile device.

Santee Cooper crews were lining up support from dozens of other public power crews from across the southeast to help with power restoration, spokesperson Mollie Gore said. More than 800 people will be available to help repair damage to the transmission and distribution systems and another 500 will make sure the utilities generation stations are ready.

Live 5 Chief Meteorologist Bill Walsh says he expects more outages as Dorian nears the state.

If you still have power, make sure your smartphones and devices are charging now so that you can stay connected.

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