Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Hoke County - Florence recovery update

We're seeing daylight again!
Just a few quick updates. First, you can see in-depth coverage about the storm in today's issue of The News-Journal! We're publishing as normal, though issues might hit retailers a little bit later today than usual as our delivery driver has to take a longer route to get to our office. Papers will be mailed out to customers as usual later today.

The power is largely back on in Raeford and Hoke County, with about 1,000people across the county still facing outages, most of them in the southern and eastern areas. If you need to check a specific location, you can use the maps at https://outages.lumbeeriver.com/ or https://www.duke-energy.com/outages/current-outages-m for your service.

As you can see from the map below from NCDOT, the county's roads are steadily improving. Rockfish Road near McLauchlin Lakes, Golf Course Road at Twin Bridges, and Camden Road near the county line are all shut down, but for the most part the major thoroughfares are clear. There may still be some debris in areas, traffic cones blocking eroded pavement, water on the roadway and line crews out and about repairing damage - so drive carefully.

As of yesterday, Hoke County officials were working with the governor's office to have Hoke added to the counties with a FEMA declaration. We'll be following up with this as soon as we have more information.

The county's offices, post office, and most services are back up and running today. Hoke County Schools are closed tomorrow for students with an optional teacher workday for teachers, and we'll let you know as soon as we hear that officials have made a decision about Friday.

The Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is now closed, but citizens can call the Emergency Management office at 910-875-4126 for information.


No comments: