Appalachian Power Storm Response Update
Sunday, January 12, 2020 – 12:30 p.m.
Situation
A strong weather system with rain and damaging winds blew across Appalachian Power’s service areas in waves Saturday, from afternoon through the night. By early Sunday morning more than 37,000 customers were without electric service as a result of storm damage. As expected, outages are widespread across much of the company’s service area.
Storm Response Efforts
Prior to the storm and based on the predicted widespread nature of this storm, we placed all of our storm response employees and contractors on alert and ready to work locally or travel to heavily-damaged areas.
Today we are following through on that plan, keeping crews and contractors in place where needed and shifting workers in areas with fewer outages to more heavily-damaged areas. We have been successful in securing additional help from outside our service area, including more than 50 line workers from North Carolina who are traveling to assist with restoration in the Kingsport area and in far southwest Virginia. Another 60 line workers from Pennsylvania and New Jersey are traveling to damaged areas of West Virginia and will begin assisting local employees this afternoon.
Restoration Estimates
In West Virginia, customers in Ohio and Marshall counties should have service restored by 10 p.m. tonight. In West Virginia’s southernmost areas, including McDowell, Mercer and Wyoming counties, service also should be restored by 10 p.m. tonight. In other areas of the state, which were harder hit by the storms, service should be restored to customers by 10 p.m. tomorrow.
In Virginia, customers in Dickenson, Grundy, Franklin and Bedford counties will have service restored by 6 p.m. tonight. Most other areas of the state, except as noted below, should have service restored by 10 p.m. tonight.
In Scott, Smyth and Washington counties in Virginia where damage is greater, as well as in Hawkins and Sullivan counties in Tennessee, the restoration effort is expected to conclude by 10 p.m.
