Thousands lose power after quick-hitting Saturday storm

A brief but violent storm Saturday night around 8 o’clock downed electrical lines and caused thousands in and around Laurens County to lose power.

Officials from Laurens Electric Cooperative, which wrapped up its annual meeting Saturday in Laurens, said high-velocity, straight-line winds felled trees and limbs into transmission lines and caused most of the outages.

The storm in Laurens lasted approximately five minutes.

Laurens CPW Manager John Young said about 1,280 customers initially lost power after the storm. Newly minted Clinton City Manager Joey Meadors said the storm created “scattered outages.”

Once the transmission lines were fixed, Laurens Electric officials said crews then began the time-consuming tasks of restoring power to individual homes and areas.

“Because each situation is different, it is nearly impossible to predict power restoration times for each individual outage,” a social media post from Laurens Electric read. “Our crews will work as quickly and safely as they can until power is restored to all.”

By Sunday afternoon, less than 600 Laurens Electric customers were still without power. That number fell to 78 by Sunday night and all power seemed to restored by Tuesday.

Crews from York and Berkeley counties in South Carolina and Union County, North Carolina assisted with restoration efforts.