NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Crews have been hard at work restoring power and repairing damage caused by this weekend’s winter storm, and one of the last times Tennessee saw ice damage on a similar scale was more than 30 years ago.
In 1994, Middle and West Tennessee saw crippling damage from an ice storm, and the electrical grid took the biggest hit. At one point, 100,000 people in Middle Tennessee, and more than 200,000 people in Memphis were without power. Some went days or even weeks before it was restored.
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According to Memphis Gas, Light, and Water, it cost around $14 million to repair specific utility systems following the 1994 winter storm.
While the cost of the damage from this weekend’s winter storm is still unknown, the ice it brought has caused significant damage to Tennessee’s infrastructure, including the interstates and power lines. According to a 1 p.m. Tuesday update from Nashville Electric Service, there were at least 216 power poles reported broken. At one point this weekend, NES reported as many as 230,000 outages.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally-owned electric utility corporation that supplies power to most of the state, told News 2 it’s restored 23 damaged customer delivery points where the TVA’s electricity enters a local utility’s system. They hope to fix the remaining eight delivery points by Tuesday night…