CARRSVILLE

Some Carrsville Highway locations near Isle of Wight County’s border with the city of Franklin are still without power.

According to Mark Bly, director of Franklin Power & Light, Electric poles along Carrsville Highway that were downed during Tuesday evening’s storm are being replaced today, and electricity along the highway corridor is expected to be restored sometime late this afternoon after a new conductor is installed.

Franklin Power & Light, in addition to being the municipal power company for the city of Franklin, also provides electricity to areas along the Carrsville Highway corridor in southern Isle of Wight County. He said that as of Thursday afternoon, one store in the Airway Shopping Center near International Paper, and Kingdom Community Church, which is located next to the shopping center, were still without power.

“We hope to have that [area] back to normal and all power restored late this afternoon,” Bly said.

Don Robertson, Isle of Wight’s assistant county administrator and spokesman, said that the county is aware of at least two southern Isle of Wight homes having sustained minor damage from trees falling on them during the storm. He confirmed that there were temporary power outages throughout the southern end of the county on Tuesday and Wednesday, but said the county did not have any information on the number of homes impacted.

Robertson added that the county’s public utility employees had worked through the night of the storm to transport and connect emergency bypass wastewater pumps because all six sewage pump houses in the southern end of the county were without power. The bypass pumps were disconnected on Wednesday and the sewer system itself sustained no damage, he said.

When asked how International Paper fared during Tuesday’s storm, Jenny Dixon, communications manager for the Franklin mill, said that IP was able to work safely through the storm-related issues Tuesday evening. She confirmed that the mill did not lose power and did not experience any significant damage as a result of the storm.

She added that the IP Employee Relief Fund is on standby to provide assistance. This was established during the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd in 1999 to provide critical aid to disaster victims around the world.

“As a public charity, the ERF’s primary focus is to support International Paper employees who are impacted by disaster and provide basic necessities and temporary relief to those in need,” Dixon said. “The company also matches employee contributions, making the most of employee generosity … Fortunately, no one has had to take advantage of it as a result of this week’s storm.”

Editor’s note: a photo caption in a previously published version of this story had incorrectly identified the storm Tuesday as a “downspout.” The correct term is “downburst.”