Thousands of Duke Energy customers in Durham are going over 24 hours without power.
The utility company says crews were conducting maintenance in a substation east of downtown Durham when an equipment failure occurred.
"We appreciate our customers’ patience as we work to complete these repairs. We know the temperatures are cold and we are working to restore service as soon as possible," said Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks.
According to the National Weather Service in Raleigh, temperatures dropped as low as 20 degrees in Durham Thursday morning.
Duke is aiming to restore power sometime Thursday evening. Meanwhile, several schools in Durham canceled classes Thursday due to the outage.
The city of Durham is opening an emergency shelter Thursday night at the old Northern High School at 117 Tom Wilkinson Road. The shelter will open at 8 p.m. and remain open until power is restored. Food and sleeping cots will be provided for up to 150 residents in need. GoDurham will provide free transportation to the emergency shelter from their Wellons Village bus stop.
Durham County is also offering its libraries as warming centers. On Thursday afternoon, several people were seeking warmth and internet connection at the Main Library in Downtown Durham.
"I'm looking to see if I have to get a hotel room for the night... because I can't do another night sleeping in 40 degrees in my house. It's just not tenable," said 31-year-old Asha Carter, after finishing a work meeting over Zoom.
Carter said her home has been without power since Wednesday afternoon. She expressed frustration at how estimates of when the power will return keep changing.
"I'm really at a 'who knows when we'll have power again?' kind of place right now. It's pretty demoralizing," Carter said.
Duke Energy has been continuously updating its estimated times on when service will return to customers.
Cheree Peffer, a pharmacy technician at Duke University, shared Carter's frustration.
"I'm really disappointed on how long its taking to get this back up. It shouldn't take this long," said Peffer.
