CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Appalachian Power is prepping for possible service outages from the Thanksgiving-eve storm but the company believes it will get some help from the texture of the snow.
“It looks like it will very likely be a dry, fluffy-sort of snow and that’s not the kind of snow that causes us widespread problems,” Appalachian Power spokesman Phil Moye said. “We expect some scattered outages with this storm and accordingly we are going to have all of our employees on alert.”
The company will use a plan that it’s used already twice this fall that enables it to call up help quickly from other districts served by parent company American Electric Power. Moye said company workers and contractors from Virginia and Tennessee have agreed to come and help with this storm if needed.
“We don’t expect damage all across our service territory and we cover a fairly large area from Roanoke west to Kingsport and north to Huntington and Ravenswood—so we have a lot of folks we can call on,” Moye said.
It is a holiday week and Moye said Appalachian Power is like any other company at this time of year–there are some employees who have the week off but that will change if the storm is bad.
“If this storm causes significant outages those folks are on alert and know they can be called back into work and they will,” Moye said. “Our priority is always that we get our customers back in service as quickly as possible.”