NEWLAND — Avery County Commissioners issued an extended State of Emergency, as well as implemented a curfew effective at 8 p.m. this evening.
"Avery County Commissioners have declared a State of Emergency for Avery County effective immediately," the bulletin stated. "The following restrictions will now be in place:
Evacuation: During this event, any evacuations orders could be mandatory.
Curfew: A curfew is implemented between the hours of 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 26 to 5 a.m. on September 27. Restricted access of the County may be implemented."
"This is being predicted as the biggest storm event that Western North Carolina has ever had," said Paul Buchanan, Avery County Emergency Management Director on Thursday afternoon. "That's what we're stressing with the curfew and other concerns. We're concerned that we've never seen anything like this before, so we are erring on the side of caution."
"It's truly humbling to be the county manager of a county like ours that comes together when we have to go through such an event. Our number one prayer is that everyone stays safe through this event," Avery County Manager Phillip Barrier said following the order. "Our motto is 'Together, we are Avery County,' and together we'll get through storm. I want to offer a shout-out to our heroes in emergency management, EMS, fire, communications, all our county employees, all our volunteers who have stepped up, the hospital system, and all the agencies who have banded together to get us through this together. This event is a lot worse than we believed it would be, so we want to stress that people stay safe and allow emergency services to do their job by staying out of their way."
Area electricity cooperative Mountain Electric is at the ready to assist its customers with any complications and outages as a result of Hurricane Helene as it makes landfall later Thursday evening and eventually makes its way toward the area.
"We have an emergency plan for events like these. We've been doing this for a number of years, so it's just something, and it's never the same. We take each outage with the same amount of seriousness and respond accordingly," said MEC Director of Member Services Sally Snyder. "We always have to take our emergency like hospitals and things like that as our priority to get back on first, and then we go from there with responding to outages.
Snyder stressed that in the event of an outage, customers should contact the cooperative through its local number in Newland at (828) 733-0159.
"That outage number can only answer so many calls at one time, and we do get a lot members frustrated because they can't get through. But at the same time, if it's busy, then most likely we know about that outage," Synder added.
Snyder noted that all available resources will be allotted in the field in the event of outages to try to restore power as soon as possible.
"Our entire workforce is available. We have 90 employees total, and that includes our office staff. We all pitch in and do whatever we need to do during these times," Snyder said. "We appreciate our members and value taking care of the outages as quickly as possible. I work with an incredible group of men and women that they really do feel like this is their calling to serve the membership as they do. It takes a special person to be a lineman... They take pride in what they do, and they do a great work."
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