00:00Many of your Carolina customers that are in the remote mountain areas, how difficult is it to
00:05repair those areas? Well, you know, on a good day there's terrain challenges and things that you
00:10face in the mountains. When you place a hurricane on top of it, it's almost unimaginable how difficult
00:15some of this is. As I said, many of the equipment in those areas has been destroyed, so it's not
00:21just getting in there to put a line back on a pole, it's completely reconstructing the line.
00:26And so that's a real challenge that we're going to face. Now, we're going to get many,
00:30most of our customers back home by the end of the week in non-impacted areas like that,
00:35but in those hard-hit areas, this is going to be an extended repair and we're doing our best
00:40to get the essentials back up. Hospitals, emergency services, some restaurants, grocery
00:45stores, wherever we can, but this is going to be a grind certainly. And what should customers
00:50without power remember to do? How can they stay safe in this dangerous situation?
00:57Well, we understand how difficult it is to be without power, especially when all your services
01:02are out. This is sort of a connection back to normal life that people are craving and we
01:06understand that. And our line workers and our employees are going through the same thing,
01:10many of them dealing with personal challenges or tragedies in their life too. So we just appreciate
01:15your patience, know that we're bringing as many resources as we can into the area, thousands and
01:20thousands more arriving throughout the day and tomorrow. And so that's going to give additional
01:24reinforcements. And as those conditions have improved, we're able to get and really start
01:29to make some headway in those areas. But we're just going to need your patience as we continue
01:33to work through these difficult times. All right. Patience, of course, the utmost
01:37importance, but everyone wants to know, you know, when do you anticipate full power restoration?
01:40Can you give us any kind of answer? Well, for most of our customers that are not in the most extreme
01:46areas, they will see their power back up later this week. And we've already restored 1.2 million
01:52customers and that continues to climb. Obviously, if you are in the areas where you've seen some of
01:57this devastation, we are working to provide those estimates to them as we understand kind of what
02:01the scope of work is. And so we will provide that as soon as possible and give them information.
02:07In the meantime, you know, we're doing everything we can to bring in temporary services,
02:11reroute power and think of innovative ways we can get some power back up in these communities.
02:16Jeff, we have one minute left. I want to ask you one last question. You talk about that the
02:19equipment have been destroyed. Are you talking about specific equipment or are you talking about
02:24actually power poles that have to be replaced? You know, we believe that right now about 50
02:31percent of the outages that we have in the upstate of South Carolina and the mountains
02:35of North Carolina will require significant replacement of infrastructure. So, yes,
02:39we're talking about utility poles, in some cases, maybe even substations and substation
02:45components. So these are major repairs. It's almost like building new service in that area
02:49in some places. And so that's going to be a real challenge. But we're bringing in the material we
02:54need to get it closer to those impacted areas. And as we restore these communities, we want to
02:59make sure that we've got all the people and resources that we can do that as quickly as
03:03possible. Jeff Brooks, spokesperson with Duke Energy, incredible information you provided for
03:07us this morning and really kind of setting the stage and the perspective of what you all are
03:11dealing with. And we appreciate all your crews and all the hard work you guys are doing. Thank you.
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