Replacement of infrastructure

"Significant replacement of infrastructure" required to restore outages in the Carolinas

From CNN’s Rebekah Riess and Carolyn Sung

About half of the power outages caused by Helene in upstate South Carolina and the mountains of North Carolina, will require “significant replacement of infrastructure,” a new statement from provider Duke Energy provided to CNN said on Tuesday.

“This is evolving from a repair or restore effort into a major asset replacement and construction effort,” the company said. “There are still parts of those areas impacted by this unprecedented storm that we have not been able to access to assess the damage.”

Duke Energy is currently reporting around 640,000 customers without power in the Carolinas. It’s unclear how many of these customers are impacted by the announcement, but it said it expects to have “the majority” of its customers’ power restored no later than Friday.

Duke Energy did not provide a specific timetable for restoration to these hardest-hit areas, but said it would update these customers on restoration times when “we have them available.”