RICHMOND, Va. - Less than 2 percent of the more than 1.8 million
Dominion Virginia Power customers affected systemwide by Hurricane Isabel remain
without power Tuesday and the company is on target to have service restored
to all customers by Friday.
As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, the company had restored power to more
than 1.7 million customers; about 31,000 customers remain without power. Much
of the work is focused on the Newport News-Suffolk, Northern Neck-Gloucester
and Richmond Metro / Tri-Cities areas.
As the number of restored customers increases and the work
is concentrated in smaller geographic areas, some of the line crews that came
to assist Dominion from utilities as far away as Oklahoma, Florida and Quebec
will begin heading home. Still, Dominion had a workforce Tuesday of more than
11,000 working to restore power.
"We remain committed to having the power back on for
virtually every customer by Friday," said Jimmy D. Staton, senior vice
president-Operations. "We will maintain a strong workforce in the field
while also saying thanks to those crews that must return home. We could not
have achieved this restoration effort without them."
As cleanup continues, Dominion continues to ask its customers
to work safely around downed power lines, especially those that are intertwined
with fallen trees. Dominion is beginning to remove electric line material from
customers' roads and yards as well as work with cities and counties as they
remove the debris from Hurricane Isabel.
Dominion also expects that most of its customers will receive
estimated bills for the present billing cycle. Not only is this as a result
of the extreme damage to the system - in some cases meters and meter bases were
ripped off of homes by falling trees and rendered inoperable -- but employees
who assist in this monthly task were pressed into restoration activities. Dominion
is adjusting estimated bills in an effort to account for the reduced usage caused
by Hurricane Isabel outages.
Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers of energy,
with a diversified and integrated energy portfolio that includes 24,000 megawatts
of generation and 6.3 trillion cubic feet equivalent of proved natural gas reserves.
Dominion also serves 5 million retail energy customers in nine states.
