Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Businesses face windstorm's ire
The high winds blew over a wall at a Roanoke store under construction and interfered with other businesses.
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Sunday's windstorm threw a kink in the progress of a new Roanoke Walgreens, a store whose opening has been delayed twice before.
High winds hit the construction site, at Franklin Road and Wonju Street, called Ivy Market, at a vulnerable time for the building's masonry block walls -- before steel joists and other structural steel had been tied in to support them.
"It was a freak thing," said Dooley English, project superintendent for general contractor Jones Realty and Construction Co.
Before the weekend, De Bello Masonry, the masonry contractor, had tethered the walls for temporary support, using steel cable fastened to light poles and other anchors. The cabling just could not hold the structure against the powerful wind gusts recorded Sunday, English said.
The winds toppled one full wall and portions of two others. Workers had the day off, and the adjacent Ukrop's Super Market store is closed on Sundays.
Bland Painter III, the developer of Ivy Market, said it's difficult to estimate how long the damage will delay the store's summer opening date.
"The engineers are still assessing the extent of the damage," he said.
Painter said the store's opening was projected to meet a June 30 deadline set by Roanoke city officials. Walgreens is supposed to open by that timetable for Painter to receive up to $600,000 in city tax incentives a year for 15 years.
It was just one of the area businesses affected by the weather.
Save-A-Lot
Sunday and Monday's power outages likely will delay the opening of Save-A-Lot, a new grocery store planned for the Roanoke Salem Business Center on Melrose Avenue.
The store was to open on Wednesday. Store manager Steve Harris said that the opening likely will be delayed until later in the week.
The store had to cancel its delivery of produce and meats. Other frozen products already in the store were placed in dry ice to keep them cold, he said.
WSLS and WDBJ
With their power on the fritz Sunday, Roanoke's TV broadcasters relied on backup generators to handle a busy news day.
Outages started shortly before noon at WDBJ (Channel 7) and WSLS (Channel 10). Hours before Sen. Hillary Clinton was scheduled to appear in town, both TV stations were running off their auxiliary power supplies.
And both stations were still off the power grid that evening, when Clinton, and then Sen. Barack Obama, canceled their visits to Roanoke because of high winds.
Monday morning, WSLS in downtown Roanoke said that service had been restored.
WDBJ in Northwest Roanoke expected to run off its generators until at least Monday night, with fuel costs mounting by the hour.
After 24 hours on backup power, the "Hometown Station" had consumed about 350 gallons of diesel, said Jeffrey Marks, WDBJ's president and general manager.
He estimated the day's fuel bill at the studio could total up to $1,500.
"We turned down the heat a little bit," Marks said.
Carilion
A Carilion Clinic facility on Colonial Avenue was without power until midday Monday, while some others, including a parking garage and a central kitchen and laundry facility, operated on generators.
Power was restored to Carilion Family Medicine on Colonial Avenue by 1 p.m., according to the company.
Staff writers Duncan Adams, Jenny Kincaid Boone, Pete Dybdahl and Christina Rogers contributed to this report.
