After nearly a week without power, Beaufort County residents on the south side of the Pamlico River found some relief on Tuesday, as the lights came back on in Aurora, Chocowinity and areas in between. At the height of the storm, approximately 12,000 customers lost power in Beaufort County.

AURORA AND CHOCOWINITY

With widespread outages affecting the southern shores of the Pamlico, the restoration of power was met with relief from officials in the area on Tuesday.

“They’re getting the town turned back on,” Aurora Mayor Clif Williams. “They’ve still got some work to do, but a lot of us have power.”

In the vicinity of Chocowinity, widespread outages affected hundreds of households in the area during the course of the storm, with many losing power for multiple days.

“We just got energized,” Chocowinity Mayor Jimmy Mobley said shortly after 5 p.m. on Tuesday. “Our water tanks are up and running. The town of Chocowinity had electricity but I understand that a lot of outside areas, like Cypress Landing, came on about 45 minutes ago… We’re on the way.”

DUKE ENERGY PROGRESS

As of 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, 1,499 Duke Energy Progress customers in Beaufort County remained without power, with the greatest concentrations being in the vicinity of Whichard’s Beach Road area and the Edward Community.

As linemen responded to approximately 1.5 millions of outages across the Carolinas during the past few days, response efforts to outages throughout the company’s coverage area have been hampered by impassible roads in many places, according to information shared by the Duke Energy Media Hotline.

According to representatives from Duke Energy, the company’s greatest efforts have been focused on restoring major transmission lines to substations, with the most intense focus on those that serve emergency facilities.

TIDELAND EMC

As of 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, 222 Tideland EMC customers remained without power in Beaufort County, with all those impacted on the south side of the river, east of Blount’s Creek. No outages were reported on the north side of the Pamlico.