EPB Power

EPB now expects to have all power restored by Wednesday.

As of monday afternoon, twenty-four hundred epb customers are still without power.

News 12's bekah birdsall has the latest on how epb hopes to restore power by wednesday.

Since sunday, epb has added 300 additional utility workers to help in tornado recovery totaling up to 1400 crew members which epb has committed to feeding 3 meals a day from local restuarants.

"when they had the tornadoes in nashville, we sent crews to nashville, and so when we had the tornado here in chattanooga, we asked for mutual aid and other cities came here."

Epb has been working around the clock to restore power to already over 56,000 customers, but still face challenges within the east brainerd community.

Hundreds of utility poles still need to be re-constructed and over 50 miles of new power lines need to be strung up.

"utilities are considered first responders because we all need our power, our internet, our phone, and our tv service and especially during a time of the covid-19 crisis when many of us were trying to work and school from home and use telemedicine, those services are even more critical so we are trying our best working as hard as possible to get everyone's services back on.

All epb utility workers have also been given masks to wear while working to restore power which fema sent over after the tornado damage.

Epb is asking the public to maintain social distancing towards their utility workers and avoid construction zones so they are not putting anyone or themselves at risk.

"we're asking for folks to stay away from the damaged areas because we're having lots of road blocks and there's lots of traffic and there's plenty of pictures online for people to see what happened so you don't really have to go there to see it."

Epb also has 25 free quick connect hotspots for those still without power.

To find this, you can click on the link on our website wdef dot com.

Reporting in chattanooga, i'm bekah birdsall, news 12 now.

It's been one week since tornadoes