The southeast US was struck by a series of devastating tornadoes on April 27. Mississippi and Alabama were struck particularly hard by these storms, but southeast Tennessee also received significant damage. We were affected by these storms, but not as severely as our neighboring utilities. The storms first affected us early in the evening of the 27th, and we essentially completed electric service restoration by the evening of the 29th.

As the storms hit, we requested that MAP cease transferring calls as our account is set up and instead fax the call data collected by your operators to us every 15 minutes. This worked very well in minimizing the distractions in our control room and made our service restoration efforts more efficient. This was the first major storm in Etowah since we began our association with MAP, and having MAP handle our incoming calls this way made the entire operation run more smoothly than in previous storms. We appreciate the efforts MAP made to accommodate our needs and the work of the operators handling our calls. We have been very pleased with the way our “routine” calls have been handled, but the service during this storm was exceptional.