Crews ready as winter weather arrives in the area

MADISON COUNTY, Tenn. — With weather hitting West Tennessee, agencies are preparing for outages, possible fires, and dangerous road conditions.

This is a time where the Madison County Fire Department sees a increase in calls.

“Any time you have a weather event, so much as what’s predicted, we have an uptick in our call volume. And that’s related to fires, obviously, people trying to stay warm using secondary sources of heat that they don’t normally use or just your car wrecks,” said Madison Fire Department Fire Chief Eric Turner.

During times of wintry weather, power failures are a common call for fire departments. If you plan to use a fire place to stay warm, you want to make sure the chimney is clean to prevent a possible fire.

And for things like kerosene heaters, or electric, you want to make sure it’s at least three feet away and vented properly.

“We make sure all of our O2 bottles, or oxygen bottles, are all full because if we lose power some people depend on oxygen. We made the extra oxygen bottles. We made sure all of our generators are fully fueled and everything runs fine even though we do that on our normal basis we just always double check that when the weather is coming,” Turner said.

Electric companies, like the Jackson Energy Authority and Gibson Electric, are preparing for possible outages. They have teams on standby in case of possible outages.

“All of our personnel is ready and our equipment is ready. We make sure that chainsaws are sharpened, the trucks are fueled, and well stocked. Our employees all know their roles and they quickly put our plans into action,” said Rita Alexander, the Vice President of Human Resources and Member Services at Gibson EMC.

Along with outages and the possibility of fires, streets will be extremely affected too. Many advise for drivers to stay home if possible.

“There are a few areas that we are working to treat the bridges and overpasses,” Lawrence said. “I would just really stress to motorist to plan ahead and know before you go. Check our  SmartWay app, get online, or call 411.”

If you’re going to be out on the streets, make sure to drive with caution and stay safe.

TDOT is salting roads, but you should still be aware of the road conditions.

You can check for outages with Gibson EMC here.

You can check for outages with JEA here.

Find live radar, hour-by-hour forecasts and more in the WBBJ Weather app.