THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060274
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Mickey Saunders sat in the comfy warmth of her Ford sedan in the driveway of her Lynnfield home Monday, patiently watching the porch light.
Whenever the bulb flickered to life, that would be the signal that more than 80 hours without power had - hopefully - ended. With Saunders for the wait were her daughter and grandson, and a cat whose water dish had frozen over.
They all watched the dormant bulb, as if its sudden luminescence would be a celestial event. ``We obviously need to get a life,'' the daughter, Susan Schrack, pined wryly.
Saunders' plight was like that of about 9,000 customers still without powerO by midday Monday. By 6 p.m., that would be cut by another 1,400. Half of those still in the dark, like Saunders, lived in Virginia Beach.
Most were trapped in electric limbo, not knowing if they were next to get juice or still at the bottom of the list. And although power had surged into the homes of several of Saunders' neighbors by Monday afternoon, her lines were still dead. A Maryland power crew, one of several tapped from out of town to help thinly stretched Virginia Power crews, worked on a tangle of lines behind her wooded lot.
At the peak of the storm, more than 138,000 homes were left in the dark. Virginia Power workers and hundreds of regional reserves whittled that number to a handful, by the power company's standards, but some damaged equipment stubbornly refused to energize.
Such was the equipment feeding Saunders' home.
``Never have I been without power this long, and I've been here 33 years,'' Saunders said. ``The longest it was out was 12 hours, and that was in a blizzard.''
Chilled to the bone on Saturday and quickly losing hope, Saunders ventured onto the snowy roads for a white-knuckle drive to her daughter's Chesapeake home. There, her 7-year-old grandson, Kevin, gave up his bed.
There really wasn't a choice, Saunders said.
``I thought they would find my dead body in this house,'' she said. ``It was so cold.''
Monday, her thermostat read 40 degrees, the lowest the needle could dip. When she exhaled inside, a steam cloud escaped her lips. A drink left on a counter was as chilled as if it had been refrigerated.
``It's warmer out here than it is in the house,'' Kevin said.
Kevin and his mother brought Saunders a Big Mac for lunch, since she wouldn't be cooking for herself. She managed a lunch of peanut butter and crackers before the burger arrived.
Still, Saunders' daughter had praise for the power crews scrambling to energize the lines. Electricity to Susan Schrack's Chesapeake home was touch and go for much of the weekend as well. ``They're doing a good job,'' she said.
By dusk, after more than three days in the dark, power finally returned to Mickey Saunders' home.
KEYWORDS: WINTER STORM ELECTRICITY by CNB