HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Several thousand customers of Appalachian Power continue to wait for electrical service to be restored to their homes and businesses. About 700 workers, some of them from Ohio and Indiana, have been working non-stop since Wednesday to make repairs left by a massive ice storm which his a five county region Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
“One of the problems is we continue to get new outages. As long as that ice is still hanging on the trees, we keep getting new outages. We are making some progress, but we’re also losing ground as new outages occur,” said Appalachian Power Spokesman Phil Moye.
Among the more than 700 workers in the field for the company are 370 line workers, 180 tree trimming crew members, and several dozen “assessment specialists.” Moye said those assessors have identified more than 600 problems in the system and put in for repairs. Some of those can be a quick fix, others take considerable time and manpower.
Moye said fortunately only a handful of poles have been broken and will need to be replaced. Most of the damage involved downed wire along the system from broken tree limbs. In some case, trees are having to be cleared just to access areas to make the repairs.
The company estimated it will have all service restored Saturday evening in Mason and Jackson Counties and Sunday evening in Putnam, Cabell, and Wayne County. However, Moye noted that’s a worst case scenario.
“We’re going to have the vast majority of people back on line before then, that’s just the backdrop time we believe that all customers will be restored,” he said.
You can look up your specific outage on the Appalachian Power website and determine how many customers are within the repair you’re awaiting. According to Moye, the more customers who are out of power the more likely the service will be pushed up the priority list.
“If you’re part of an outage affecting 200 customers, that’s very likely to be fixed before an outage that effects two or three customers. We’re using the same amount of resources to make the repair it’s just getting more customers back on,” he said.