Specific rumors and misinformation have spread rapidly through social media and group texts since power outages swept Nashville homes early Sunday morning, adding to the uncertainty and chaos of the weather emergency.
Snowfall and freezing temperatures left more than 200,000 Nashville Electric Service customers without power, forcing many to find temporary shelter or hunker in homes without appliances, lights and, critically, heating infrastructure. Unverified information — shared between friends, family and strangers — has amplified this week’s high-stress reality, even forcing a response from top city leaders at Tuesday’s daily press briefing.
Roughly 135,000 homes and businesses are still without electricity during the biggest outage in NES history
Social media related to NES and Metro is full of frustrated comments from residents who still lack electricity as of Tuesday afternoon. Many cite the same specific, unsubstantiated rumor: that NES has turned away union linemen because they don’t want to pay their wages.
“I’m not familiar too much with the details of what you mentioned there,” Brent Baker, the NES utility operations executive overseeing storm repair, told a reporter who asked about the rumor at the city’s Tuesday morning emergency press briefing. “We do have a union workforce and contractors from all over who are coming to help us."
Baker went on to explain that the city has continuously brought on more workers as they’ve become available. Accounts on X and Facebook continue to drive narratives that blame NES, without evidence, for turning away additional labor. One account on X — sporting the username “Nick Smith” followed by a string of numbers — even claims to be a lineman who was turned away by the city. Others, including many Nashville residents still suffering from a lack of electricity, repeat the rumor in posts across social media.
“The linemen at NES are unionized,” explains Maura-Lee Albert of SEIU, the union that represents the NES workforce. “I believe NES management who say they haven’t turned away workers — they want to see power restored just as much as everyone else. There are legitimate things to rage-bait about right now — let’s not focus on unsubstantiated rumors. We have union crews out there pulling 16-hour shifts.”
Albert does point out that NES hasn’t grown its employee base in a decade, leaving the utility with an undersized workforce.
“NES should, at a minimum, have 150 more employees in frontline positions,” Albert tells the Scene. “We don’t need any more engineers. There is always work to be done, and very few existing employees work just 40 hours a week — they are working lots of overtime. We need to scale up, because we are a growing city."
An AI-generated photo posted and later deleted from Instagram during the January 2026 ice storm
Splintered trees and downed limbs have damaged cars and brought down power lines across Nashville. Icy branches have blocked roadways and made many lanes impassable. It’s not hard to find actual photographic evidence showing iced-over neighborhoods — the Scene's photographers have taken many of them. Instead, people have been sharing a sensational photo that bears clear markers of having been generated by artificial intelligence. At first glance, the image looks like a particularly devastating ice storm scene. With a closer look, branches turn into power lines and cars blur into houses. One account, @nativeinnashville, shared the photo on Instagram in a now-deleted post that got more than 100,000 likes.
City leaders continue to promote warming shelters around Davidson County. Mayor Freddie O’Connell and top NES, fire department, police and other emergency services executives refuse to speculate about when life will return to normal, instead describing power outages and freezing temperatures as “multiday” and “prolonged.”
“The emergency declaration was issued for an up-to-seven-days period, and we expect it to be active for the entirety,” O’Connell said on Tuesday. “Not only having that declaration but encouraging people to document things they are dealing with is going to be crucial as we move on to recovery beyond this immediate impact period. We do have that declaration in effect, and it will stay in effect for a few more days. We will evaluate at that point how much progress we’ve made.”
