Anson County suffers downed trees, power outages and road damage after Michael whips through

ANSON COUNTY, NC (WBTV) - Downed trees and wet roads were the most of Anson County’s concerns as Tropical Storm Michael whipped through the Carolinas Thursday. Heavy rain started in the morning, while county officials activated the Emergency Management Office around 7 a.m. and stayed busy all morning.

“With the rain we’ve had already this week, the trees that were damaged from Florence that didn’t come down [are a concern]. With the ground being that saturated, trees will be coming down with the gusts of wind that we’re expecting,” Rodney Diggs, with Anson County Emergency Management said Thursday morning.

Anson county received about three inches of rain Thursday morning and afternoon, and saw wind gusts up to 40 mph. Those high winds caused trees to come down across the county, however not as many as expected.

Anson County Department of Transportation crews responded to multiple downed trees throughout the afternoon, including one on McCrae Avenue in Lilesville that took out some power lines. That specific incident left close to 1000 Pee Dee Electric customers without power. It was just the first of many outages for the local electric coop, which had close to 3000 customers lose power across their coverage area as of Thursday evening.

Road conditions, which plagued Anson County after Florence, were affected by Tropical Storm Michael as well. Damage was not as devastating as it was last month, but as of 7 p.m. Thursday evening, NCDOT showed 16 roads closed due to weather events.

For the most up-to-date road conditions, visit the NCDOT website here: https://tims.ncdot.gov/TIMS/RegionSummary.aspx?co=4

For Pee Dee Electric outage updated, you can find their live outage map here: http://omv.pdemc.com/

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