6:00pm: Sportsline with Tony Caridi

Charleston power outage could have been worse

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Repair crews from Appalachian Power spent much of Friday pulling burned-out circuits, wiring and other parts of a power vault from a downtown manhole on Virginia Street.

The vault exploded and caught fire Thursday afternoon, darkening several blocks of the downtown area for the night. Appalachian Power’s John Shepelwich said most of those outages were a deliberate attempt to contain the fire.

“When we were made aware of it, our protocol calls for isolating it and essentially to shutdown the rest of the underground network in that circuit,” he said. “What that does is help to protect the rest of that system.”

Crews spent much of the night inspecting all of the underground conduit, vaults, and other electrical distribution equipment to make sure there was no further damage. By 4 a.m. Friday they were able to determine the only damage was at the Virginia and Hale streets intersection. While most power was restored by noon, a few customers in the immediate proximity were expected to remain cutoff until late Friday night.

“Our crews acted very quickly and kept major damage from being done, so that the outage wouldn’t go on for a few days and be a lot more extensive than it actually was,” said Shepelwich.

The cause of the malfunction was still unknown.

“We’ve been removing any kind of damaged materials and cataloging that, inventorying that, and documenting that so we’ll be able to determine what caused it,” Shepelwich said.

While most service was restored, crews planned to continue repair work through the weekend.





More News

News
PEIA examines financial effects of new law meant to ensure local pharmacies get fair reimbursements
Gov. Jim Justice signed Senate Bill 453 into law this week.
March 28, 2024 - 4:11 pm
News
Barbour County woman sentenced after death case sent back to circuit court by Supreme Court
Carli Reed sentenced on voluntary manslaughter conviction.
March 28, 2024 - 4:11 pm
News
UMWA to fight planned Pennsylvania coal mine closure, 700 mining jobs at risk
Cumberland Mine less than 40 miles from Morgantown.
March 28, 2024 - 2:23 pm
News
Bridge collapse having an impact on West Virginia coal shipments
About third of the coal mined in northern West Virginia is shipped out of the presently idled Port of Baltimore
March 28, 2024 - 1:18 pm