Power outage overview: some residents could see restoration Sunday
Published 4:02 pm Saturday, October 13, 2018
Outage maps indicate that thousands in the Heart of Virginia remain without power. Representatives of Southside Electric Cooperative and Dominion Energy have cited that the outages seen in Central Virginia have been profound and record-making.
Some residents could expect to see restoration Sunday morning, according to a message by Farmville Town Mayor David Whitus and Dominion Energy’s External Affairs Representative Sarah Perkinson.
Whitus, in a social media post, shared a message from Perkinson, who said the priority for the company has been to restore power to critical infrastructure such as hospitals, fire departments, sewage, water treatment systems, schools and municipal buildings.
“The majority of these have estimated restoration times of the end of day today, including the High Street Pump Station in Farmville,” Perkinson said Saturday afternoon. “In addition, we have crews currently working the outages affecting the Poplar Forest and Parc Crest Pump Stations.”
Perkinson cited that as of 3 p.m. Saturday, Prince Edward County has approximately 2,736 without power.
Perkinson continued that “Many residents will begin to see estimated restoration times for their outages tomorrow morning. Looking at the outages for Farmville, there are currently roughly 1,000 customers without power. Of these, 547 are associated with an outage expected to be restored by 2300 tonight. However, we do expect that there may be customers that will still be without power into Monday and potentially into Tuesday, though very few single-issue customers at that point.”
Perkinson cited that the majority of the damage in Farmville consisted of broken poles and downed trees.
“This work unfortunately in most cases takes multiple crews and a great amount of time to complete,” Perkinson said. “In many instances in the area, the outages being experienced are from multiple broken poles. I assure you, we do have crews working in Farmville throughout the day and night.”
Perkinson said additional crews from Dominion Energy’s Charlottesville and Orange offices are here assisting as well as crews from companies in Pennsylvania arrived earlier this afternoon. Other contractor crews have been staged in the region since Thursday and Friday.
Perkinson encouraged people to continue to report if their neighborhoods or homes do not have power.
“Just because their neighbor is without power, does not mean that we know they are without power,” Perkinson said. “Their outage could be caused by a different issue.”
Representatives from Southside Electric Cooperative (SEC) said in a news release that as of 5:15 p.m. Saturday there are approximately 14,283 SEC members remain without power after Thursday’s storm.
“At the peak of the severe weather event, over 40,000 members were impacted – roughly 70 percent of SEC’s system,” officials said in a news release, citing that Hurricane Irene in 2011 left 26,000 in SEC’s coverage area without power.
SEC said in a social media post that the teams of crew working to restore power have had obstacles that include numerous downed trees, more than 40 broken poles, miles of downed wire and flooded roads.
To report outages, call (or text if enrolled) SEC at 1-866-878-5514 or (434) 309-2700. View SEC’s outage map here.
Dominion officials said in a news release that the company is working to restore power to approximately 120,000 in the state without power as of 3 p.m. Saturday.
“We expect to have the vast majority of customers’ power restored by the end of the day on Monday,” officials said in a social media post Saturday. “We expect to have individual restoration times for all customers on Sunday morning.
Customers can call 1-866-366-4357 for updates. View Dominion’s outage map here.
Officials said Saturday that the event is now the sixth largest outage in Dominion Energy history.