Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 4, 1994 TAG: 9403040205
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS and KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Many people, frustrated after losing power just days after getting it restored following a February storm, were coming to the center to see when it might be turned on again.
Officer C.A. Brown's job was to find someone who could talk to them. Past the doors and down the hallway, Apco workers were once again gathering information about outages.
"I wouldn't want their job right now," Brown said as he looked out the door. "It's definitely a mess out there."
It also was a mess in the Roanoke Valley, where falling trees and other damage from two days of freezing rain, sleet and snow cut off power to 23,800 Apco customers by 4 p.m. Thursday. By comparison, 15,000 of Apco's 105,000 customers in the Roanoke Valley lost power in the February ice storm.
After suffering through three major ice storms this winter, Virginians may start thinking they've been cursed, said Jerry Stenger, research coordinator with the state climatologist's office in Charlottesville.
However, the unfortunate reality is that the state has been caught in a persistent pattern of air movement in the upper atmosphere, Stenger said.
This pattern of "sleeze" - sleet and freezing rain - tends to persist and regenerate itself, he said.
The good news is, the region is in for a break from the wintry weather, he said. The temperature rose to 42 Thursday afternoon in Roanoke and temperatures in the 50s are predicted today and Saturday.
February's ice storm may have been Virginia's worst this century, based on a review of weather records and news articles, Stenger said. Only a storm in the winter of 1943 compares to the February storm, he said.
"It's going to be another one of those multi-day kind of outages like we saw in the Feb. 11 storm," Tom Jobes, assistant manager of Apco's Roanoke division, predicted of this week's storm. The February storm cost Apco roughly $2.5 million.
Apco had 127,700 customers without power Thursday. At 4 p.m., the company's Roanoke division, which includes the Roanoke Valley and the counties of Franklin, Henry and Patrick, had 58,600 customers out. The Pulaski division, which covers the New River Valley, had 47,800; and the Lynchburg division, 13,040.
Despite the warming and the end of precipitation Thursday, the number of power outages in the Roanoke and New River valleys increased during the day as trees continued to fall on power lines and customers were finally able to get through to report their outages.
The areas hardest hit by outages in the Roanoke Valley were in Southwest Roanoke and Roanoke County, Hollins, Garden City and Bent Mountain. Virtually all Patrick County's 8,700 Apco customers were without power because two 67 kilovolt power mains were downed by fallen trees.
About noon Thursday, practically the entire Montgomery County service region - 17,500 customers - lost power because of a downed feeder line near Claytor Lake. Power was restored to several areas of Christiansburg within 90 minutes or so, but the Virginia 114-U.S. 460 corridor remained dark.
Jobes said the Roanoke division was taking about 1,000 to 2,000 phone calls an hour from customers who had lost power.
Just as the highway department clears primary roads first after a storm, Apco restores power to lines affecting the largest number of people first, Jobes said.
Unlike the February storm, which struck much of the East Coast, Apco was able to get emergency crews - including contractors and crews from other American Electric Power subsidiaries - into the area quickly this time, Jobes said. At daybreak Thursday, Apco had 400 people working on downed lines in the Roanoke division. By 11 a.m., that figure had climbed to 1,050, with crews coming in from the Carolinas, West Virginia and Ohio.
Police departments in Christiansburg and Blacksburg were operating on generator power after losing electricity at about noon.
"We're in the dark," Blacksburg's acting Chief Bill Brown said.
At noon, emergency generators and propane tanks were helping the police department continue normal operations. But Brown said that would only last about eight hours.
If the electricity was not restored by then, Brown said, cellular phones and portable radios would be used by officers to communicate with each other and with the dispatchers.
"The biggest obstacle now is lunch," Brown said.
Power to both departments was restored Thursday afternoon.
Staff writer Todd Jackson contributed information to this story.
School days missed because of bad weather\ Bedford County 14\ Botetourt County 14\ Craig County 19\ Franklin County 11\ Patrick County 18\ Roanoke City 9\ Roanoke County 13\ Salem 11\
by CNB