Maps show where power is being restored in Nashville amid claims prioritization is being decided by race, income

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) — Claims started circulating this week that Nashville Electric Service (NES) is prioritizing power restoration based on race or class. Restoration and demographic maps show otherwise.

Hundreds of thousands of Nashville Electric Service customers were left without power due to the winter storm that swept across Tennessee. The NES Board said Wednesday morning that it “was an ice storm of historic proportions.”

“No areas seemed spared at all,” the NES Board said. “We had high winds that followed this storm … that combination of circumstances resulted in our having the highest percentage of customers out of power from one weather event on record for NES.”

As of 4:38 p.m. on Wednesday, NES reported that more than 100,000 customers were still without power and that there were still hundreds of reported broken poles in their service area.

But is that restoration being prioritized by race or class?

The Metro Council Minority Caucus firmly denounced those claims, saying “some of Nashville’s most affluent neighborhoods are still without electricity, just as many working-class and historically marginalized communities are.”

And maps of the outages, as well as demographics of Nashville neighborhoods, indicate the same.

Nashville Electric Service power restoration

A map provided by NES shows what customers have had their power restored. Green areas are those whose power has been turned back on. Red are customers who remain without power, as of late Wednesday afternoon.

Nashville neighborhoods by income

This map by the website Neighborhood Scout, which provides hyper-local real estate data, shows how income growth varies across Nashville. The darkest blue on the map indicates the greatest increase in income levels with the darkest red indicating the greatest decrease.

According to Neighborhood Scout, Midtown East, Belmont/Hillsboro and East Nashville are among the fastest growing areas in Nashville by income. As of 5:30 p.m., Midtown East still had several dozen outages. Belmont/Hillsboro had roughly 100 outages and East Nashville had more than 180 outages.

In a map from bestneighborhood.org that’s color-coded based on current median household incomes, you can see how income varies across neighborhoods by green, yellow and red, with green indicating the highest income, yellow indicating average and red indicating low.

Based on that map, you can see that many of the higher income areas remain without power.

Nashville neighborhood maps by race

Another map by Best Neighborhood, based on U.S. census data, shows the majority race across Nashville neighborhoods.

Based on the NES maps, there continue to be numerous outages in white-majority neighborhoods, and areas with more diverse majorities have had much of their power restored.

You can see how those maps compare to the power restoration map provided by NES below. Slide the white bar in the middle of the images to see a direct comparison.

NES continues to restore power

With linemen from several states working 14- to 16-hour shifts, NES has said that it is now in an “all-hands-on-deck” situation. Hundreds of power lines remain down across Middle Tennessee and in many cases, after power has been restored, frozen trees have been breaking apart and falling and damages areas that have already been restored.

“The outages reflect the scale and severity of the storm,“ the Metro Council Minority Caucus said, ”not discriminatory decision-making.”

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