MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Crews from Mon Power are making progress as a severe batch of winter weather passes through the area. Around 9 a.m. Friday more than 1,000 Monongalia County residents were in the dark and by 5 p.m. that number dropped to 392.
“Mon Power crews are still working to restore about 3,700 customers of the nearly 20,000 that were effected by this storm,” Catlett said. ” The issue is that wind continues to cause additional outages.”
In a post on social media Mon Power said. “The sustained high winds have hindered restoration efforts because crews cannot safely work in bucket trucks when winds are in excess of 40 mph. Difficult hazardous traveling conditions have also made it difficult to access damage locations. Similarly, before utility crews can safely access the site of an outage and begin making repairs, a forestry crew must remove tree debris. This can be a time-consuming process.”
“We have about 130 linemen working between our employees and contractors,” Catlett said. “At this time we do think we’ll have a majority of customers restored by tomorrow night. We know being without power over the holidays, especially in this weather is not easy.”
The line crews battle cold, high wind, ice and downed trees that cause obstacles to access facilities in need of repair. But, crews continue to make progress throughout the region.
“They’re fighting the possibility of frostbite, so they have to take extra breaks,” Catlett said. ” They’re limited as to what they can do out there because it is so cold and windy.”
To view the current outage map click here.
Appalachian Power
Appalachian Power Company made significant progress in its outage numbers Friday.
The utility reported 3,200 customers still without power heading into the nighttime hours. The most outages in Kanawha County at 1,396.