THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602040171
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Virginia Power construction supervisor Larry Black and a 10-person crew spent Saturday on Sweet Briar Avenue trying to restore power to part of the Lakewood neighborhood.
Again.
For the second day in a row, Black was working in the same neighborhood, on the same street, on the same lines.
After Black's crew repaired the lines Friday night, they went for a quick dinner. Then, they were promptly sent back to the same area. More ice-laden pine tree limbs had tumbled onto the power lines and shorted them out.
``It's somewhat frustrating,'' said Black, 46. ``Especially when it falls down quicker than you can put it up, it's frustrating. We're going to catch up, it will just take a little while.''
The members of Black's crew are among the nearly 2,000 local and out-of-town power workers and contractors battling the ice storm and patching broken lines throughout South Hampton Roads. Crews were working 16-hour shifts, with only eight hours off.
Hundreds of trees, especially pines, have buckled and split under the weight of the ice that coated them Thursday and Friday nights. When a branch falls across a line, it's just like two live wires crossing. Sometimes, the contact blows a fuse in Virginia Power's circuits. Other times, the line burns in half and falls to the ground.
Faced with more work than workers, the power crews' plan is simple: Fix it quick and make it safe, then make it look pretty later. It's sort of an emergency triage.
``That's all we're trying to do,'' another power worker said. ``Just get the lights back on, and then we'll come back and make it look like it's supposed to sometime later.''
On the Sweet Briar Avenue job, men perched in cherry pickers used high-speed circular saws to clear branches dangling around power lines. Other workers used cranes with hydraulic arms to ferry equipment to the tops of utility poles.
An earthdigger as big around as a small tree trunk corkscrewed through frozen mud to make a hole for a new utility pole to replace one that cracked when a huge branch fell onto its lines.
More than once, Black said, repaired lines were knocked down by falling branches even before workers had time to energize the wires.
Friday, branches were snapping with such regularity that Black's workers had to keep diligent watch on the trees overhead to dodge the falling timber.
``At night, you hear something go, `CRAAAAACK,' and you can't see where it's falling. That's eerie,'' Black said.
Most of the customers have been understanding, Black said. In fact, one woman's first task with her freshly restored power was to brew coffee for the crews.
Some less patient customers on Saturday quit waiting for the power crews to come to them, and instead went driving around to look for the crews.
``They'd ask, `Can you get me next?' '' Black said.
He promises that he's trying. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
RICHARD L. DUNSTRON/The Virginian-Pilot
BRINGING POWER TO LAKEWOOD - AGAIN: For the second day in a row, a
Virginia Power crew works to restore electricity to the Norfolk
neighborhood Saturday. On Sweet Briar Avenue, a tree branch fell
onto a power line, causing the utility pole to crack. The pole was
replaced.
Photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Neil and Connie Marshall, and their daughter, Jennifer, try to warm
and light the room with fire Saturday afternoon on Blue Marlin
Circle in Virginia Beach. by CNB