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Weston official reacts to weekend’s gas outage

WESTON, W.Va. — Only single digits of households in Lewis County remain without natural gas service, after a mechanical issue at a station near Weston caused outages for community residents.

Roughly 2,500 Lewis County residents were impacted by the outage, DEWV spokeswoman Samantha Norris said. Of those customers, 160 were not available for restoration on Saturday.

“That number is down to nine now,” Norris said. “We are continuing to call and make contact attempts.”

Weston Mayor Julia Spelsberg said she was impressed with the fast response and hard work that Dominion employees put in to assure all would have service before the Christmas holiday.

“The problem was they had to go to every building, turn off the gas and come back and turn it on,” Spelsberg said. “The guy came into our house and lit everything, but boy, that was a monstrous task.”

Spelsberg said she lost service Thursday morning, one day before she was to host a Christmas party at her home.

“We didn’t get our gas back on until Saturday morning. Thank goodness we had some electric heaters in the house,” she said. “In my opinion, compared to if you lose your electric or if you lose your water, that would’ve been pretty bad. I mean, I was still able to have our Christmas party.”

While the outage didn’t have any major repercussions, such as freezing, it did cause operation issues for some local businesses.

“For example, we have some gas blowers in town, and I did talk to one that when his furnance went down, it was a major, major problem for him,” Spelsberg said.

What Spelsberg was most surprised to see was the community coming together with holiday spirit, despite the inconvenience.

“They said they hadn’t met such nice people,” she said. “I know that I gave them some candy and many others gave them Christmas treats, which was very nice.”

The Lewis-Gilmer 911 Center also operated warming stations throughout the county for those in need.

“For being something so terrible, it worked out pretty well for us. We were lucky,” Spelsberg said.

Customers who have not had their service restored are asked to call 1-800-934-3187 to have a technician return to reinstate service.





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