BLUEFIELD, W.Va. – Mercer County continues to lead the list of counties in WVVA’s coverage area that have the most outages, with thousands still left in the dark.
Hundreds are also still doing without in Tazewell County. Area residents were hoping to get their power back on by Wednesday night. However, snow and ice still continues to damper restoration efforts.
“One of the problems we’ve had with Mercer County is it was so cold the ice did not fall at all on the lines. We had a lot of difficulty with just travel with the ice and snow on the roads,” said Debby Pannell, spokesperson for Appalachian Power.
Pannell says crews have had no choice but to battle ice when repairing damaged equipment such as lines, power poles and transformers.
Pannell says there’s been a steady influx of restoration crews coming to the area since Wednesday. She says Appalachian Power’s goal was to have power back on by Wednesday night for most people.
However, due to lingering ice and snow they fell behind.
“We continued to have power outage after power outage continuously so even though the initial power outages may have been on the 6th every day we had additional outages that were added to that total. They have made repair after repair but are making progress,” said Pannell.
Pannell says they’re now aiming to have 90% of people’s power back on by 11 pm Thursday.
Pannell says Appalachian Power is not anticipating any major outages from this weekend’s predicted snow fall. However, she says crews will remain on stand by to deal with any potential outages.
WVVA will continue to monitor outages. To view AEP’s outage map and sign up for outage alerts you can go here.
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