Morning Storm Knocks Out Power to Hundreds

As of 12:30 p.m. Wednesday approximately 500 homes or businesses in West Ashley were waiting for the power to come back on.

Strong winds from a morning storm that blew through the Charleston area caused the outages. Several SCE&G work crews were busy repairing the outages. (See where outages occur in real time on the SCE&G website.)

Most of those affected should see power return within the next hour, according to SCE&G estimates.

SCE&G Charleston Public Affairs spokesperson Kim Asbill said the outages are all weather related, either from wind damage or trees of branches hitting power lines.

Earlier on Wednesday around 1,000 SCE&G customers along Savannah Highway lost power for a few minutes when a branch hit a power line in the area, but Asbill said the utility was able to switch those customers to another transmission line within a few minutes, and power has been restored to that area.

"Everyone should be restored by 2 p.m.," Asbill said. "It's important to report outages when they happen, don't just assume a neighbor will do it. Everyone needs to report outages so we can log them and get the crews to respond."

Asbill also cautions that no one should go near a downed powerline, even if it doesn not appear to be sparking.

"There could be power going through it still, you never know," Asbill said.