Six City of Andalusia Utilities employees are headed to Chattanooga Tuesday morning to assist with restoring power in that city after more than 60,000 residences and businesses experienced outages as a result of damages from a severe storm system and an EF-3 tornado battered the area on Sunday night. 

Mayor Earl Johnson said the City of Andalusia has an agreement with Electric Cities of Alabama, which has reciprocal agreements with other states, to assist other utilities in times of crises. 

“I’d rather send help than need help,” the mayor said. “But it’s good to know that, through this association, we could get help if we needed it.”

The city’s utilities department will be paid for the use of its equipment and its employees’ time, the mayor said.

A foreman, two lead linemen, an apprentice lineman, and two groundsmen are headed to Chattanooga with two bucket trucks, a digger/derrick truck and a pole trailer. 

At least two people died and 21 were hospitalized in Chattanooga as a result of the storm. The EF-3 storm had wind speeds that reached 145 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Hundreds of structures were damaged.