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Covington Electric Co-op is working to restore electricity to thousands of customers who lost power as a result of storm activity late Wednesday night into Thursday morning.

According to representatives of Covington Electric, more than 5,400 members in Covington, Crenshaw and Coffee counties were without power at the peak of the outages. Crews worked to repair lines and restore power, but were forced to pause their efforts at one point due to safety regulations. Crews immediately returned to the effort and the number of customers without power was reduced to under 1,000 as of approximately mid-day Wednesday.

Officials said there are still broken poles, downed wires and trees on power lines.

“The restoration process has been extremely tedious, but crews are diligently working to restore service as safely and quickly as possible,” according to a CEC statement. “We could see new outages as more waves of severe weather move through our area, but hopefully not.”

Contract crews are assisting with the restoration effort, consisting of 20 line workers. Other co-ops and utilities from Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida were hit hard during the storm and seeking assistance from other utilities not impacted by the storm.

“We want to assure our members who are still without service that we are working as hard as we can to get your power restored. Please remember to stay far away from downed lines and always use generators properly according to the manufacturer’s guidelines. Thank you to everyone for your patience and encouraging words. Our employees appreciate this more than you know,” the statement read.

Additional information and updates can be found on their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/covingtonelectric.