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Power outages go up as limbs come crashing down

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Across five counties in southwestern West Virginia the forest looks like an array of carnival glass as a result of the storm which rolled in Wednesday night. Although pretty, the ice coating every inch of every tree is a disaster for Appalachian Power. The additional weight of the ice caused limbs to break and fall onto the power lines creating thousands of outages.

“There’s just a lot of ice hanging on those tree limbs and that’s what causes us the problems,” said Phil Moye, Spokesman for Appalachian Power.

 

The biggest ice accumulation happened in Cabell, Wayne, Putnam, and parts of Mason and Jackson Counties overnight Wednesday into Thursday. The accumulation is reflected in the outages; as of Thursday evening, Appalachian Power had more than 33,000 outages in West Virginia with 97% of cases in those five counties.

“The longer that ice stays on there, the more likely it is those limbs are going to break. We expect we’ll see more outages today as the ice stays on those tree limbs,” Moye explained.

Fortunately, the company had lead time to prepare and called in several hundred out of state linemen to stage in Huntington and Charleston. Moye said they were in motion as soon as the first outages came in Thursday morning.

“Fortunately we did get a couple hundred workers from Ohio and Indiana. We got them in place Wednesday and they were ready to roll as soon as the outages started to pile up,” he said.

 

The company was unable to give an estimate on restoration time since the ice continued to be on the trees. According to Moye, as long as the ice was there, the potential for outages remained high.

“It’s likely before we see outage numbers go down, we’ll probably see them go up a little bit,” he said.

In a released statement the company cautioned everyone to avoid downed power lines and report them immediately.

Ice storms can cause damage that downs power lines. Customers should treat all downed lines as live power lines and stay away from them. Never touch downed power lines or sparking equipment. Keep children and pets away from fallen lines and anything the lines may touch.

Customers can get specific information about the outages affecting their accounts via text message and/or email by subscribing to Appalachian Power outage alerts. To sign up, please visit their website.