RICHMOND, Va., Oct. 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion
Virginia Power crews made steady progress over the weekend,
restoring power to more than 70 percent of the 462,000 customers
impacted by Hurricane Matthew since 4 p.m.
Saturday. As of 6 a.m. Monday,
136,600 customers remain without power at 3,600 work locations.
The majority of those impacted are in southeastern Virginia and
northeastern North Carolina, where
historic rainfall, high winds and saturated ground combined to
cause extensive damage to roads, bridges and electrical
infrastructure. Damage included broken poles, cross arms and downed
wire in many locations. Extremely hazardous flooding conditions and
high winds over the weekend made it too dangerous to use bucket
trucks and hampered our ability to initially make repairs at
hard-hit locations.
Since the storm impacts lasted well into yesterday, today is our
first full day of restoration. Our crews are out in force and will
continue to focus on damage assessments and restoration to critical
services such as 911 centers, water pumping stations and hospitals.
There were 433 critical services affected by the storm and, as of
this morning, 87 percent of them had been restored.
We appreciate the patience of all of our customers as we work
through this multi-day restoration effort. By mid-day today, we
will have a projection of when storm restoration work will be
complete for all customers. Once we have a more complete assessment
of all damage, we will be able to provide individual estimated
restoration times for customers.
The company has more than 2,300 people working to restore power
and that number will increase as we bring back 500 additional line
workers onto our system from contractors returning from
Florida. We also continue to work
through our mutual assistance process with neighboring
utilities.
We expect to have the vast majority of customers impacted in
Richmond, Midlothian and Northern Neck areas back on
today, and a remaining few by mid-day Tuesday. With the extensive
damage in our Eastern Region, we expect restoration work there to
take several days.
We cannot emphasize enough to stay away from downed wires and
trees making contact with wires. Stay at least 30 feet away
and report downed wires to 1.866.366.4357. Call Dominion right away
at 1-866-DOM-HELP (1-866-366-4357) to speak with an
agent to report the downed wire. Please be patient if the wait time
is longer than usual – it is very important for Dominion to know a
wire is down.
Be sure to report your outage right away to help us with an
efficient restoration. The quickest and easiest way is to report it
on dom.com using your mobile device. You can also call us at
866-DOM-HELP.
Dominion Virginia Power is a
subsidiary of Dominion (NYSE: D), one of the nation's largest
producers and transporters of energy. Dominion serves more than 6
million utility and retail energy customers. It has a portfolio of
approximately 25,700 megawatts of generation, 14,400 miles of
natural gas transmission, gathering and storage pipeline, and 6,500
miles of electric transmission lines. Dominion also operates one of
the nation's largest natural gas storage systems with 1
trillion cubic feet of storage capacity. For more information about
Dominion, visit the company's website at www.dom.com
For photos of storm damage, visit
https://www.dom.com/hurricane-matthew-photos.
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SOURCE Dominion Virginia Power