Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation is on high alert and employees are monitoring severe winter weather of sleet, freezing rain and snow predicted for the cooperative’s service area in the mountains and foothills of northwest North Carolina.

If members have an outage, they should report it over the cooperative’s PowerLine at 1-800-448-2383.

Employees are on standby, ready to respond in full force at any time of the day or night should outages occur.

Blue Ridge Electric offers the following tips to help members stay comfortable and safe should an outage occur.

Have the following supplies on hand in a location that each member of the household can locate quickly:

• Flashlights and fresh batteries
• Matches with firewood and kindling or
• A grill with extra propane charcoal and lighter fluid
• Radio with fresh batteries to listen to weather and news reports
• Extra blankets, sleeping bags, quilts
• Oil lamps and extra oil
• Wind-up or battery operated clock
• Non-perishable food
• Manual can opener
• Paper plates and plastic utensils
• Bottled water or gallon jugs filled with water for drinking and cooking
• Formula and extra diapers for babies
• Thermos for keeping drinks and baby formula warm
• Emergency numbers such as Blue Ridge Electric’s PowerLine, local emergency management, police and hospital contacts.

Additionally, if you require a regular medication, be sure to keep extra supplies on hand. If you or a family member requires oxygen, it’s a good idea to have a back-up power source and a personal emergency plan that includes family, friends or local emergency management sources to assist you if needed.

For checking outage status, Blue Ridge Electric provides an online outage map atwww.BlueRidgeEMC.com

Crews with Union Power Cooperative are ready to restore power as
quickly as possible if outages should occur as a result of the predicted winter
precipitation mix in the cooperatives five county service area.

“We are
monitoring the situation carefully and are prepared for possible power outages.
While we don’t expect any significant ice accumulation, should this change,
Union Power will be ready to act,” says Carrie Cameron, Manager of Member Communications

Union Power
Cooperative members are asked to call their cooperative directly if they
experience a disruption in power.

Please call Union Power’s outage
reporting number at 1-800-922-6840.
Keep this number on-hand before power outages occur. Members can visit union-power.com to view the outage map on the
website as well.

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