Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Thousands remain without power, heat
At the peak of the outage, about 80,000 Appalachian Power Co. customers were affected.
Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times
Helene Sweeney bundles up her daughter, Shawna, 4, and their dog Dora. The Sweeneys have been without electricity since Sunday.
Tom McLain (left) and Travis Adcock with Davis H. Elliot Company repair a downed power line off of US 460 in the Coyner Springs area of Botetourt County.
Power outages
The beagle stood shivering atop the couch.
Shawna Sweeney, 4, and her mother, Helene, huddled beneath a bedspread in the darkened living room. Helene reached up and fetched the beagle, Dora, pulling the dog close to share the covers and body heat.
The temperature inside the family's trailer hovered in the low 40s Tuesday morning.
Without power, heat or well water since about 2:30 p.m. Sunday, the five members of the Sweeney family joined thousands of other Roanoke Valley residents Tuesday who were still waiting and hoping for the return of household electricity.
Sunday's high winds toppled trees, downed power lines, sparked brush fires and caused an outage that affected, at its peak, about 80,000 customers within Appalachian Power Co.'s Virginia territory. About 45,000 customers lost power in the Roanoke Valley.
Ice in Southside Virginia caused the number of power outages in the region to start rising Tuesday night. Todd Burns, an Appalachian spokesman, said that there still were 7,200 outages related to Sunday's storm as of 10 p.m.
About 1,600 people worked on storm crews Tuesday, he said.
Burns emphasized that the company's commitment to restoring power will not ebb now that the number of people without electricity has dropped.
Estimates suggest most customers should have power restored by midnight Thursday, he said.
A temporary shelter in the exhibition hall at the Roanoke Civic Center remains open and will stay open until power has been fully restored, said Amy Whittaker, a spokeswoman for the Roanoke Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross.
Whittaker said 27 people spent Monday night at the shelter and 80 have registered since Sunday.
Helene Sweeney said some residents of the small but populous trailer park off Willowbrook Lane in the Coyner Springs area of Botetourt County had left to find shelter elsewhere.
"We don't have money or a place to go," she said. "All our family is out of state."
Ed Sweeney keeps the cellphone charged by plugging it in at the Blue Ridge Library, where he also checks the Internet for outage updates. The family has hauled creek water to flush the toilet. No one has showered.
"We all have hair that stands on end," said Helene Sweeney, smiling. "If you hide beneath the covers, you can pretend it's warm."
Directly across U.S. 460 from the trailer park, residents of Brookfield, a tidy subdivision of wide streets and trim single-family homes, also lost power Sunday afternoon.
They were still waiting Tuesday for its return.
Kathy Prillaman said gas logs provided some warmth in her family's living room, now a temporary bedroom. Without power, the subdivision's well was not supplying water.
Across the street, a neighbor's portable generator clattered.
Ed Sweeney said he recently purchased about 30 pounds of ground beef, which he had packed into the refrigerator's freezer.
"I bought it on sale at Food Lion," he said, shaking his head.
Meanwhile, less than half a mile from the trailer park, two linemen, a groundman and a foreman from Davis H. Elliot Co. of Roanoke toiled at a key spot for the Coyner Springs area's electrical distribution system.
Linemen Travis Adcock and Tom McLain, propped on climbing hooks, attached new crossarms, insulators, guy wire hooks and other hardware to a utility pole newly planted off U.S. 460.
Foreman Bill Vaden said the crew, including groundman Josh Vaden, would temporarily block traffic to string new wire across the highway. He was hopeful, but not certain, that the Sweeneys and their neighbors would have power back by nightfall Tuesday.
The new pole replaced one splintered Sunday when a tree fell on lines strung from its crossarms. The downed lines started a small brush fire on the now charred hillside.
At the nearby Roanoke Valley Juvenile Detention Center, ringed by razor wire on Coyner Springs Road, generators supplied power.
A storm crew on Webster Road included men from Pike Electric, a North Carolina-based power line contractor.
Andy Everman, a Pike foreman who lives in Kentucky but works out of Ohio, said he and co-workers had arrived Monday about 11 p.m. and were lodged at a Days Inn.
Everman acknowledged that storm-related repair work on power lines can be dangerous.
"You have to stay on top of whatever you do," Everman said.
Appalachian spokesman Burns said storm crews sometimes encounter residents who greet them warmly and ply them with coffee and sandwiches.
But there also are those, he said, unhappily chafing for power.
"You have a lot of folks who are appreciative of the work and the weather the crews work in," he said. "Occasionally, there are other folks who let their frustration get the best of them."
Sometimes a line will be re-energized but then quickly fail again, he said.
When power is restored to cold homes, with all the major appliances still plugged in and furnaces firing anew, the "cold load" on the line can be too much and Burns said it can blow newly installed fuses.
"We advise customers to turn off all their major appliances before power is restored," he said.
