TENNESSEE (WATE) — As Florida starts to recover from Hurricane Milton, several states, including Tennessee and North Carolina, are still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene . The Department of Energy is working to restore power and looking for ways to make the power grids in the United States stronger, especially as more severe storms are expected in the future.
As of 10 a.m. on Friday, there were 85,000 remaining outages, down from the peak of 4.6 million outages . Most of these outages are in North Carolina and Georgia. David Turk, Deputy Secretary at the Department of Energy, explained that for many of the remaining power outages, more than just fixing the power lines is needed.
‘You don’t want to die, so swim’: 80-year-old swam to safety through floodwaters “The good news is we made a lot of progress in a lot of places all across the affected region,” said Turk. “The other bad news is for a lot of those communities, it’s not a matter of just plugging the grid back in. It’s a rebuild situation, given the level of devastation that we’ve seen to houses, to whole cities, to whole towns. And so, this is something we’re going to need to be working not just for the next few days, but literally weeks and months and years to do right by those most affected.”
Turk also mentioned that they are committed to helping these communities for the long term, and stressed the importance of making investments to build a stronger grid that can withstand future storms.
Newport family thought their home was livable when they applied for aid. It wasn’t. “We’re in to help those communities for the long haul and we also need to keep making the kinds of investments so that everybody has a hardened grid, everybody has a more resilient grid,” said Turk. “We’ve got to prepare for the storms of the future as well. And we’re spending a lot of focused time and money on that.”
The department is exploring different ways to make the power grids stronger, including putting power lines underground, using stronger poles, and building microgrids. Currently, the department has 65 projects funded across the United States through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law , with two projects underway in Tennessee.
“The second thing that we spend a lot of time on working with others in the federal government is as much expert modeling, expert science as we can bring to bear so that we can anticipate what those storms of the future might look like, what kind of damages they’re going to have. I think Helene surprised quite a number of folks by bringing so much water so far inland,” said Turk.
Evacuations urged after ‘explosives’ found at business along Western Ave He added, “What we’re seeing here is, unfortunately, because of climate change, because the Caribbean Sea is so much warmer, the Atlantic Ocean is so much warmer, because there’s so much more energy in the atmosphere. These storms are getting bigger quicker, there’s a lot more precipitation. That’s one of the lessons I think we’ll be learning from Helene.”
He emphasized that due to climate change, hurricanes are becoming more intense, with more precipitation and bigger impact. The focus is on building infrastructure that can withstand these kinds of storms, and it’s essential to invest in this now to be prepared for the future.
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