LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – As the commonwealth urges Kentuckians to be weather aware, power companies are making arrangements to respond.

Kentucky Electric Cooperative Spokesperson Joe Arnold said the volume of the service area means they are preparing for outages in any part of the state.

“Well, co-op crews like emergency responding are always in a state of preparedness, so the trucks are always geared up and line workers are always ready to go,” Arnold said.

Arnold said they prepared for high winds and heavy rain. He says they remind crews to take care of themselves ahead of prolonged power restoration.

“You have a lot of conversations. A lot of reminders. At that point, there’s nothing you can do to stop the winds and to stop the storms,” Arnold said.

He said that with the ground being saturated, they are expecting downed trees and for powerlines to go down with them.

“Now, you compound that with the amount of water, and then the restoration is going to take that much longer. If you have 10-15 inches of rain in some areas, certainly you can access some areas with a boat,” Arnold said.

Arnold said the need for possible boat use makes asking neighboring cooperatives tricky. Still, they said they have crews in other states, like Georgia, on standby.

“We do expect there to be so much intense rain over a period of days, the co-op crews that are going to need to have boats and need to have life preservers, they need to be prepared to deal with a lot of waters,” Arnold said.

He said if you are in an area expected to flood, make plans for long restoration times.

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