Strong line of storms cause outages

Central Electric crews worked through the night and into the early morning to restore service to over 2,500 members who lost power as a result of a severe line of thunderstorms passing through our area Friday afternoon. The storm brought heavy winds that caused downed trees and limbs primarily in Lee County. A downed tree broke a pole and took down the cooperative’s Jonesboro substation for several hours, responsible for approximately 2,300 of the outages in the HWY 42 and NC 87 area around Broadway. After replacing the broken pole, the substation was brought back on line shortly after 9 p.m. Crews were able to restore service to all members by 3 a.m.