CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Sunday’s calmer weather enabled Appalachian Power and Mon Power crews to make significant progress on power outages caused by Saturday’s windstorm but there remains work to do.
Appalachian Power’s Sunday evening update said there remained about 11,000 customers without service in its West Virginia service area.
The utility predicted it would have most customers in Cabell, Lincoln, McDowell, Mercer, Nicholas, Putnam, Wayne and Wyoming counties back on by Monday night. The restoration effort is expected to be complete by Tuesday night for the most heavily-damaged areas which include parts of Boone, Clay, Fayette, Kanawha, Logan, Mingo, Raleigh and Roane counties.
Of the 16,400 customers currently without power, 11,800 are in West Virginia, 4,400 are in Virginia and around 200 are in Tennessee.
Visit https://t.co/wTbpK7HxlV for information about your outage. pic.twitter.com/d0BwLUek7G
— Appalachian Power (@AppalachianPowe) April 2, 2023
Appalachian Power said some customers may have service restored sooner than estimated. The company said it’s used 2,600 workers including 600 line workers from outside the state. They are working 16-hour shifts.
Appalachian Power said it will have to replace 100 broken or damaged poles in three states and approximately 650 spans of downed wire.
Mon Power reported Sunday evening it had restored 32,000 of 35,000 customers who had originally lost service. The utility said it hoped to have everyone back on by Monday night.
Power has been restored to about 32,000 of the nearly 35,000 customers affected by the severe weather that impact our service area yesterday. We expect to restore power to the majority of remaining customers by tomorrow evening. Full update: https://t.co/U1UIH2a9O5 pic.twitter.com/iTApnyOyC1
— Mon Power (@MonPowerWV) April 2, 2023
The National Weather Service said much of the state and wind gusts between 45 mph and 65 mph for most of Saturday afternoon and evening.