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Electric power officials in Western North Carolina said Sunday the catastrophic damage left in the wake of Hurricane Helene was unprecedented.

“We’ve never seen a storm like this in our company’s history,” Duke Energy officials wrote on a written release sent to the regions elected officials and key leaders.

“The damage to our infrastructure is extensive, with much of the transmission lines and substations that feed large numbers of customers and geographic areas requiring repairs — and in some cases, needing to be entirely rebuilt.”

Duke Energy officials said they have 18,000 workers in the field and are working with state and local officials to get access to the hardest-hit areas to assess what is needed to restore service to those areas.

“Based on what we can see on the ground, from helicopter and by drone, there are lots of areas across the South Carolina Upstate and North Carolina mountains where we’re going to have to completely rebuild parts of our system, not just repair it,” said Jason Hollifield, Duke Energy storm director for the Carolinas. “And there are stretches of damage that we still can’t even assess due to mudslides, flooding and blocked roads.”

“Our teams of lineworkers and other storm responders will continue to work with local and state officials to gain access to the hardest-hit areas so we can do what our customers and communities expect from us – safely and swiftly get their power up and running.”

As of 9 p.m. Sunday the company said the following numbers of outages still existed.

Cleveland County – 22,014 customers out.
Henderson County – 64,848 customers out.
Polk County – 10,665 customers out.
Rutherford County – 24,623 customers out.
Transylvania County – 12,063 customers out.

Officials said they hope to have most customers back online by Friday evening at the latest, but acknowledge some areas that are still inaccessible or unable to receive service due to transmission grid infrastructure could take longer.