THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060287
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY W. BROWN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
Paying for nature's latest winter rampage in Virginia will be expensive.
It's too early for the accountants to quote a bottom line, but Virginia Power estimated it will spend between $2.5 million and $4 million cleaning up after the weekend's ice storm. A company spokesman said there were no plans to raise rates.
And the people who keep the highways cleared - the Virginia Department of Transportation - reported it expects to spend $10 million of its statewide $43.5 million snow-clearance budget.
The Virginia Power figures had a touch of irony.
At the peak of the storm early Saturday, the utility couldn't get power to 138,000 customers in southeastern Virginia. Transmission lines were being snapped by falling, ice-encrusted trees and branches.
But Monday morning, the company said it may have set a record for demand. Preliminary estimates showed customers used 14,900 megawatts between 7 and 8 a.m. If audits confirm that figure, it would break the utility's all-time demand record set Jan. 19, 1994.
Virginia Power said it was selling nearly 1,500 megawatts of power to other utilities during Monday's peak demand - and that it still had a comfortable margin of generating capacity left.
By 6 p.m. Monday only about 7,600 Virginia Power customers still had no electricity. A utility spokeswoman said the remaining customers should have their power restored by today.
Hugh Cobb, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Wakefield, said Hampton Roads accumulated between 1 and 1 1/2 inches of ice and sleet and 4 to 7 inches of snow since early Friday.
Freezing weather is expected to stick around until the end of the week. But the weather service predicted a touch of spring on Friday with a high in the low 50s.
Today's forecast called for sunny skies with highs of about 35 degrees. It will be clear tonight and should get up to 40 degrees Wednesday. The high temperature Monday was 24 degrees; the low, 11.
The Associated Press reported four storm-related deaths in Virginia, none of them in Hampton Roads.
As ice began to coat the area's rivers, an Old Dominion University oceanographer warned against testing it.
``It takes a couple of weeks of these temperatures to get just 2 inches of ice,'' said Ray Alden, director of ODU's applied marine research laboratory.
Seawater freezes at zero degrees, Alden said. The brackish water in the rivers of South Hampton Roads are about two-thirds seawater. It will freeze when temperatures get into the low teens, he said.
Virginia Power spokeswoman Pat Gayle said the company called in 325 of its own employees from other parts of the state to help restore service in Hampton Roads. In addition, the utility brought in 140 contract workers and 100 tree-cutters.
Gayle said she could not recall a weather event in which Virginia Power had to call in so much outside help to Hampton Roads. Along with a local repair contingent of about 475, they worked 16-hour shifts.
``They have done one great job,'' Gayle said.
VDOT's task, like Virginia Power's, is far from being finished.
``We know we will be out (today) spreading and pushing,'' said William J. ``Bill'' Cannell, spokesman for VDOT. ``And depending on the weather, we could be out Wednesday.''
Cannell predicted that no matter how much this storm costs VDOT, the $43.5 million budget probably will be exceeded during 1996. Other funds, Cannell said, will probably be tapped to pay for the over-run. This could affect other services later in the year.
Hampton Roads cities were still tabulating their costs for the storm.
Most of them follow a snow-removal plan to first plow major roads. Officials said with a limited number of workers and equipment, most residential streets will not be plowed.
``The city doesn't have enough resources to plow residential streets,'' said John Keifer, director of Norfolk's department of public works. ``We're challenged with the number of resources we have just keeping the streets cleaned now.''
Forty to 50 workers rotate 12-hour shifts, Keifer said. About 30 pieces of snow removal equipment, including 20 snow plows, have been dispatched.
Some of Norfolk's high-priority roads include: Brambleton Avenue, Campostella Avenue, Virginia Beach Boulevard, Tidewater Drive, Little Creek Road and parts of Granby Street, among many others.
Chesapeake has spent about $50,000 just to cover damage to snow removal equipment, said John A. O'Conner, that city's public works director.
O'Conner said their main focus is heavily traveled roads such as Battlefield Boulevard, Greenbrier Parkway, Volvo Parkway and Western Branch Boulevard. Once those are passable, crews begin to tackle secondary streets.
Chesapeake has 35 pieces of snow-removal equipment, more than 100 workers and a ``couple thousand miles of roads.''
Many of the employees worked 12- to 16-hour shifts - often on overtime - during the weekend.
``We worked our people pretty hard,'' O'Conner said. ``They need to get rest.''
The challenge with this storm has been the constantly freezing roads, which have required scraping at least three times. And temperatures that remain below freezing have not helped the crews, O'Conner said.
Vasilios Hadjiyiasemi, operations management administrator for the department of public works in Virginia Beach, said workers rarely venture into subdivisions because clearing residential streets often makes life more difficult for homeowners by leaving behind piles of snow. Parked cars also make residential streets difficult and hazardous for plows, he said.
Virginia Beach owns 35 plows and leases five graders. Because the trucks have been operating for three full days and nights, the city's fleet has been reduced somewhat by mechanical problems, Hadjiyiasemi said, and only 31 or 32 plows are on the street at any one time.
Despite those minor mechanical problems, Hadjiyiasemi said he was amazed at how smoothly everything has been going.
``Machines, equipment and human beings have been pushed to capacity, but everything has been working very well and is uneventful,'' he said.
Hadjiyiasemi said his department has not yet calculated the cost of this weekend's cleanup effort. But counting the expense of clearing snow in January it will be nearly impossible to stay within the city's snow-clearing budget, Hadjiyiasemi said.
``The first time around it was an expensive proposition,'' he said. This storm ``looks like it's going to push us over the amount that we have budgeted.''
Portsmouth meanwhile used 400 tons of salt and 400 tons of sand to clear the snow and ice. The city used 10 trucks to clear first the bridges and main arterial roads, including High Street, London Boulevard, Turnpike Road, Portsmouth Boulevard, Airline Boulevard and George Washington Highway, said C.W. ``Luke'' McCoy, deputy city manager.
Personnel from public works, parks and recreation and vehicle services were all called in. A smaller team from public utilities monitored the city's water lines.
Public utilities expects to be busier toward the end of the week as the temperatures rise and leaks in water mains begin to show.
McCoy said the city budgets for two snowstorms a year. Each snowstorm usually costs between $50,000 and $75,000 - ``that's just strictly for removal, salt, sand, labor and equipment,'' he said.
McCoy said the city has ``probably used up all the money budgeted for snow storms this year.''
Suffolk Public Works Director Thomas G. Hines said the city used its two plows and two other snow-removal machines to first clear its busiest roads and bridges, such as U.S. Routes 13 and 32.
``We do the same procedure every time, except if there's a problem with depth (of the snow),'' Hines said. ``If people can't get down their streets, we'll go and plow a single path through those roads so they can get out. But this time we didn't have that depth.''
MEMO: Staff writers Cindy Clayton, Mac Daniel, Jon Frank, Katrice Franklin,
Dave Mayfield, Karen Weintraub and Toni Whitt contributed to this
report.
ILLUSTRATION: Graphic By JOHN EARLE, Photo By JIM WALKER/The Virginian-Pilot
KEYWORDS: WINTER STORM by CNB