More than 50,000 remain without power in Kentucky; some counties worse than others
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A blast of rain, sleet and ice that hit Kentucky knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses in the central and northeastern parts of the state, with some people facing the prospect of being without electricity for days.
Utility crews whittled the number of outages down through the day Thursday, but as of 5 p.m., there were still 51,305 homes and businesses without power, many of them concentrated in the northeastern corner of the state near Ashland, according to one map.
Boyd County had more than 10,000 customers still without power, and Lawrence, Greenup, Carter and Rowan counties had thousands more.
There had been more than 74,000 customers without power in the state at mid-morning Thursday.
“A lot of the county is out,” Robin Thornsberry, director of the 911 system in Elliott County.
Thornsberry said the county could potentially set up a shelter at a fire station if needed but most people preferred to stay home. The county emergency manager, Jim Skaggs, had worked Thursday morning to get a generator for a couple dependent on oxygen whose electricity was out.
Kentucky Utilities, which serves Fayette County and much of Central Kentucky, showed 1,485 Lexington customers without power at 5 p.m., down from more than 5,000 earlier in the day. A KU spokesman said it was too soon to predict when power would be restored to all customers in Lexington.
Throughout KU’s service area, crews had restored power to thousands, but the company said about 3,400 remained without electricity at 5 p.m. Those included the nearly 1,500 in Fayette County.
Joe Arnold, spokesman for Kentucky Electric Cooperatives, said the rural electric cooperatives hit hardest by outages were Clark Energy, Grayson RECC and Fleming-Mason.
Boyd County Emergency Services manager Tim England said about 43 percent of the county was without power.
He anticipated power wouldn’t be restored until Saturday with the temperature expected to drop Thursday night to the 20s. As crews removed trees that fell on power lines, other limbs knocked down lines at times, England said. The county will use drones to find broken lines.
“It looks like a war zone in the rural areas,” England said.
The county had a warming shelter at Boyd County Convention Center for residents who need power and heat. England said no one had arrived yet, but it will remain open if needed.
Kentucky Power, which has about 160,000 customers in 20 Eastern Kentucky counties, including the Ashland area, said it had nearly 800 people working Thursday to restore power.
The utility said it started the day with nearly 25,000 customers without electricity, and most were still without power at 6 p.m.
It appeared most of the outages in its region resulted from trees falling, breaking poles and bringing down a lot of electrical wires, the utility said in a news release.
The storm also knocked out some large transmission lines. Slick roads and downed trees were slowing repair work.
It will likely take several days to restore power to everyone, the utility said.
This story was originally published February 11, 2021 at 8:31 AM.
