South Carolina 811 advises residents to call before digging as clean up from Hurricane Florence begins

A free phone call a few days before digging helps identify approximate location of underground utility lines

In light of the recent devastation caused by Hurricane Florence the Communities in South Carolina will be coming together to clean up and rebuild in the coming weeks.

During this time, one important phone number can help residents from adding to complications during the cleanup process. For any clean up that involves digging or removing trees from the ground, SC811 reminds professional excavators and homeowners alike to call 811 at least three full business days before they start to dig.

Every nine minutes an underground utility line is damaged because someone decided to dig without first calling 811. Striking a single utility line during hurricane clean up or any other time can lead to personal injury, penalties, repair costs, and expensive and inconvenient outages.

When residents call 811, they will speak with a call center representative who will take the location and description of the project site and notify affected utility operators. These utilities will then send professional locators to mark the approximate locations of their lines. Once these lines have been marked, residents can begin to carefully clean up around the marked lines. This number is not to be used to report utility service outages.

“In the aftermath of devastation, we must remember that safety is a shared responsibility, and calling 811 helps protect the people who dig and entire communities,” said Kaziah S. Howard “It’s one easy phone call that will help make sure a difficult situation isn’t made worse.”

For additional information regarding safe digging practices, please call 811 or visit www.sc811.com