MOUNDSVILLE W.Va. — Marshall County residents that have been greatly impacted by the winter storm that dumped ice and snow on the area Thursday night into Friday began seeing electricity and water service back on Tuesday afternoon.
Tom Hart, the Marshall County Office of Emergency Services Director told MetroNews on Tuesday that there remains just over 1,000 AEP customers without power, down from the 8,000 impacted at the height of the storm.
Hart said emergency and power officials are still dealing with getting electricity back on in ‘smaller pockets’ of the county. His office reported that the rural central portion of the county, Public Service District (PSD) No. 4 had water service return Tuesday.
A tweet from Marshall County OEM read:
From Marshall Co. PSD#4: Roberts Ridge tank is full; Bowman Ridge tank is filling; will turn begin filling Cameron Ridge tank; customers on Roberts, Bowman, Nauvoo, Goshhorn & Grapevine Ridges & Sally’s Backbone should get water soon with low pressure that should slowly increase.
— Marshall Co WV OEM (@MarshallCoWVOEM) February 8, 2022
Hart told MetroNews about the situation, “PSD 4 customers should start seeing water flowing. If they have not already seen water flowing to their homes they should have it sometime today (Tuesday). It may start as low water pressure but it’ll eventually build up once the tanks get filled.”
Appalachian Power spokesman Phil Moye told MetroNews on Monday that the damage impacting power lines is in a relatively small area but it’s significant.
Hart said crews have had to ‘cut their way in’ to get to their infrastructure.
“Thursday night into Friday, all-day Friday, even into Saturday you could hears trees and limbs snapping left and right. It could sound like a gun blast when they were snapping,” he said.
There were 225 locations where repairs were still needed in Monday’s report, Moye said.
Navigating icy and tricky terrain during storm restoration is never easy. We’re doing our best to get all customers restored in a safe manner.
? View and report outages: https://t.co/9X0SsopEwj pic.twitter.com/Hivue7LCjM
— Appalachian Power (@AppalachianPowe) February 8, 2022
At the height of the storm, there were 13,000 customers in the Northern Panhandle without power. Ohio County was another hard hit location but AEP reported only 165 outages as of Tuesday.
In Ohio County, Oglebay Resort reported Monday that the ice caused trees to fall and ‘significantly damage’ a Festival of Lights display.
“We’re looking back at late ’70s, early ’80s since we’ve had an ice storm this bad,” Hart said.