Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Wind gone; cold stays on
Utility crews are working to restore power knocked out by Sunday's windstorm. Repairs could take days.
Photo by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times
Workers Chris Gibner (left) and William Spence on Monday mend wind damage to the roof of the West End United Methodist Church in Roanoke. Sunday's windstorm left widespread damage.
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Nearly 1,500 utility workers and woodcutters began detangling the tree-snarled electrical grid in Western Virginia on Monday, but they may need days to restore service to tens of thousands of people without power.
"We will probably see outages into Friday in the Roanoke area," Appalachian Power Co. spokesman Todd Burns said. Utility workers were so slammed that by Monday afternoon 1,500 separate problems throughout the electric system still awaited repair.
The power company dipped into supplies of spare utility poles, fresh wire and spare fuses to manage one of the worst electrical outages in Appalachian's Virginia service area in years. Burns was too busy to determine if the incident was as severe as the outages following the ice storm that coated the Roanoke Valley in February 1994.
The scale was impressive. Sunday night, at the outage's peak, 80,000 customers were without electricity. By Monday night, the figure had dropped to just below 34,000.
This morning, the figure was likely to be slightly lower or the same, as the great majority of crews were scheduled to rest Monday night, Burns said.
The numbers fell short of portraying the storm's full impact because they exclude data for Bedford and Salem and parts of Botetourt and Craig counties served by independent distribution services.
Monday, traffic lights were out at seven major Roanoke intersections. The power outage closed Addison Fitness Center, Mountain View Center and Mill Mountain Discovery Center, all operated by the city's parks and recreation office.
Also closed Monday were Roanoke County's Kesler Mill Road complex, home to various offices and a regional firefighter training center, and the Charles Hill Senior Center, the War Memorial and the Vinton Library, all in Vinton. Melrose Towers in Roanoke, home to more than 200 elderly and disabled individuals, was operating on limited backup power.
In Roanoke, downed limbs or wires blocked garbage trucks from entering 15 alleys and several streets. A few city buildings had wind damage. All of Craig County was temporarily without power, though power was largely back on by Monday afternoon.
Salem, in contrast, saw power restored quickly by the municipal electric service after a few hours. Only three of the 12,500 customers served by the Salem Electric Department still were without power on Monday, Electric Department Director A.K. Briele said.
City officials said most of the damage in Salem was caused by fallen trees and flying debris.
Half of the rear portion of the Salem Museum's tin roof was peeled away by winds on Sunday, exposing a few artifacts to the elements. Nothing inside the museum was damaged, Director John Long said Monday.
Aided by crews from at least four other states, Appalachian said it was restoring power first to the largest clusters of households sharing a damaged circuit or line.
Burns cautioned that some people might have to wait days because electrical repairs are time- and labor-intensive: Severed lines must be spliced or replaced. Shorted lines must be cleared of faults. Blown fuses must be replaced.
In just one example, four utility workers spent all day on Cove Road on Monday repairing damage done by a 65-foot pine tree that leaned into a power line Sunday, cracking the cross arms on a nearby utility pole and blowing a fuse. Foreman Larry Lawson said the tree, given its large size, should have been trimmed or taken down some time ago.
Cove Road resident Carolyn Saunders lost not only her electricity but also her water and sewer service, the latter because of underground pipe breaks. She stepped out of her front door to watch, double wrapped in a robe over her clothing.
"I don't have nothing, nothing but God taking care of me," she said.
Sunday night, the utility received "thousands" of reports of hazardous conditions such as downed power lines, Burns said.
But even with crews working long hours, he added, the threat of live wires remained Monday and would remain until every situation could be checked.
"I think we had five poles broken in one area," Burns said in reference to Burlingham Heights, a neighborhood in North Roanoke County.
Some 1,500 outages were still awaiting repair late Monday afternoon, making it all the more important that Appalachian deployed its crews efficiently. A team of dispatchers in downtown Roanoke was making those decisions, aided by engineers at temporary work stations trained to spot shortcuts to enable the most people to regain the use of their lights, appliances and heaters.
They were in radio contact with personnel working the lines, who included 500 utility workers from Appalachian's local work force, 500 tree trimmers and about 300 utility workers from Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee. Visiting workers were poised to spend most of the rest of the week here.
Staff writer Marquita Brown contributed to this report.
cody.lowe@roanoke.com 981-3425
jeff.sturgeon@roanoke.com 981-3251
