RICHLAND COUNTY, South Carolina — New numbers from Dominion show that most of their customers have regained power as of Tuesday afternoon, but thousands across Richland County are still without in the aftermath of Helene.
Dominion served 181,354 customers in the county, according to their outage map, with just a few thousand without power. Crews so far have been focusing on big picture repairs to get power back as fast as possible to as many people as possible, says Dominion spokesperson Matt Long.
"The way that you do that—you focus on the transmission lines. Those are the larger lines you see going between our communities from town to town, and help deliver power to neighborhoods, kind of on a larger scale. So we’re focusing on getting those back and running and then we can kind of focus on getting into those at the neighborhood level or the community level."
He says they will work on fixing any localized issues for the remainder of the customers in their network without power.
News 19 also reached out to tri-county electric—a representative said they have fewer than 5 outages left in Richland County. They were able to get power back after the storm in less than three days.
Crews could be seen working in Forest Acres to repair power lines in Mary Kelly and Tom Wager's neighborhood. The pair has been without power since Friday morning. They say they're fortunate that their daughter lives in Columbia, so they have a place to stay in the AC.
"Luckily we have a gas cooktop and I was able to light it with a match and make campfire coffee. So we are surviving. We’ve had to throw away most everything in our refrigerator," said Wagner.
Kelly says while being without power is hard, they know many were hit harder with damages to their homes, so she's thankful.
"Just being out of your house has been challenging." said Kelly. "I think it will be back today or tomorrow and it will be nice to stay in our own bed."