BLUEFIELD, W.Va. – According to Appalachian Power’s outage map there are still thousands of people without power in the two Virginas. Leaders from AEP say outages are not just due to issues with substations.
There are still thousands of individual issues linked to single power poles servicing single customers. Those are the customers who are in the final leg of their restoration process.
During his press briefing Tuesday, Governor Jim Justice shared his thoughts when asked about his reaction to the severe weather that hit southern West Virginia hard. WVVA asked Justice if any resources were being made available to Mercer and the other surrounding counties still dealing with impacts from the storm.
“I don’t know if dollars have been requested. Our people are constantly talking to those counties and everything. I don’t know of the requests that we’ve gotten in. We did have some severe weather in Mercer, McDowell and Wyoming counties probably some other spots as well but those were the primary counties. We’re continuing to gather information,” said Justice.
“In all fairness we have had many situations as far as weather in West Virginia that were much more damaging and everything to this event in West Virginia. You know what it did in North Carolina.”
During his briefing, Justice also shared that crews from the West Virginia National Guard will deploy to South Carolina to assist local agencies in support of reconstruction and debris cleanup efforts as the state begins to rebuild.
Meanwhile officials with AEP say crews are continuing to work around the clock to restore service to customers in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. Adding they hope to get power on for people by 11 pm Tuesday night in areas like the Bluefields and Tazewell.
Appalachian Power is asking for continued patience while their crews work. AEP also urges those waiting for their lights to come back on to monitor AEP’s outage map or even sign up for outage alerts on their specific outage.
“We’re trying to hit that number. We still feel like the majority of our customers will be restored tonight by 11 pm. There are some harder hit areas throughout our territory that will probably dip into tomorrow,” said AEP spokesperson, George Porter. “Our morning meeting, first thing our VP said was hey let’s get people restored today like we said.”
Leaders with the utility company say when looking to fix lines they try and target areas that have the most people in the dark and go from there. Bluefield city manager Cecil Marson estimates around 80% of the city has had their power restored but says crews have been working in different areas of the city on Tuesday including on streets like Hill Avenue and Heatherwood Road.
“Unfortunately we’re getting down to the areas where there was a lot of damage and multiple trees and multiple lines down and transformers broken. This is going to be a lot of the hard work,” said Marson.
“An example is the Heatherwood area, multiple homes there were damaged, multiple lines down. That’s not a one line fix. There’s transformers all through that area that have been damaged and it’s going to take some time to get those things remedied and fixed.”
All West Virginians who suffered any personal property damage from last week’s severe weather are being urged to fill out a storm damage survey.
You can fill the survey out by going here.
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