High wind causes outages

Local News

November 12, 2009

T. J. ROYAL

Much of Edgecombe County was spared from widespread outages and with no reports of homes damaged from the heavy rain and high winds Wednesday.

The area is under a.wind advisory until 6 a.m. Friday and a flash flood watch is in effect through this evening.

Town of Tarboro Electric Utilities Director Buddy Harrison said outages in town were "spotty," with around 75 people without power Wednesday night.

Most power has been restored, Harrison said and his crews were working this morning to restore power to sections of McKendree Church Road, after a car hit a light pole.

While the Town of Pinetops had widespread outages beginning around 4:30 a.m., Town Administrator Greg Bethea said most of it had been restored this morning.

Rodney Bradley, vice president of operations with Edgecombe-Martin County Electric Membership Corp., said that while Edgecombe only experienced 30 outages, there were 800 total outages within its service area. All the Edgecombe homes' power has been restored, he said.

Edgecombe County Emergency Services Director Butch Beach said that he had "no real damages to homes" reported to his office. There were "a few streets with water" in their roadways, likely due to uncleared drains, but he added that there were otherwise no reports of flooding.

Beach said that he had local people tell him they received between 5.5 and 6.5 inches of rainfall so far.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Laura Pagano in Raleigh said the NWS had an official tally of 3.5 inches of rainfall in Rocky Mount over the event. Still, she said the area could have had isolated areas with higher totals.

Sustained winds will remain around 20-25 mph through Friday, she said, with gusty winds possible.

Pagano said the rain is the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida and would likely end Friday afternoon or night, and that the weather over the weekend would be "much better," with clear skies and highs in the mid 60s and lower 70s.