More than half of Selma is still in the dark and Alabama Power and Pioneer Electric are working hard to get the lights back.

According to Alabama Power Public Relations Officer Jan Ellis, crews hit the streets as soon as the storm subsided, but it will still take time before the city lights are fully back on.

As of 2:30 p.m. Saturday, 13,777 customers were without power, which is down significantly from the original 18,500 customers shut down immediately after the storm.

Statewide, Alabama Power has 390,834 people without power.

“This is the worst storm (ever) to hit our system,” Ellis said.

Alabama Power isn’t alone with their service problems.

According to press releases from Pioneer electric, they’ve been having massive outages throughout their system as well.

“For the first time in Pioneer Electric’s 67 year history, not a single meter was spinning last night after Hurricane Ivan swept through. We had substantial damage throughout our electric system,” Pioneer Executive Vice President Malloy Chandler said.

Pioneer serves 11,000 customers in the area.

“We’re still expecting that it may take two weeks in some areas before electricity is restored,” Chandler said.

Right now, Ellis said, the only thing customers can do is wait.

“We have brought in 181 employees in different crews to help with the restoration,” Ellis said.

Pioneer has 200 additional crews.

Ellis said crews have come in from all over the country, and several trucks have been observed around town from as far away as Oklahoma.

Ellis said the biggest problems Alabama Power crews are facing are the broken poles scattered throughout their service areas.

Several customers are frustrated, as the power comes on sporadically throughout the city.

Nancy Moore, a Broad Street resident, has had the experience of looking up and down the street and seeing lights on everywhere but in her neighborhood.

“I guess I assumed that living on Broad Street we wouldn’t go this long (without power),” Moore said. She said that the lack of information was perhaps the most frustrating thing about the situation.

“I just want somebody to tell me something,” she said.

Ellis said the restoration process was complicated and predictions were hard to make.

“We first send out evaluators to assess the damage and see where we need to start,” Ellis said. “If there’s a huge area where we can go and work and get a large amount of customers on then that’s where we’re going first.”

Ellis said that in the coming days, Alabama Power would have an estimated time of restoration for specific hours, which she hoped would eliminate some of the frustration.

Even so, the restoration process will be slow.

When Ivan hit, the storm broke 50 power poles in the area and Ellis said that there have been 303 cases of lines on the ground reported as well.

The good news is that Alabama Power has cut some of those numbers down. By Saturday, the company reported that only 22 poles were still down.

Also, as of Saturday at 7 p.m., Ellis revised the timetable on repairs. She said that by Thursday, 99 percent of the customers in the Selma area will have service restored.

Ellis said that the company stressed safety throughout the restoration process. She stressed that all downed lines should be reported immediately and treated as live wires at all times.

For more information, or to report an outage, call 1-800-888-2726.