Dominion on Target for Completion
of Hurricane Isabel Restoration Effort
RICHMOND, Va. - Dominion Virginia Power crews were working
Friday on the last few remaining outages from Hurricane Isabel. Full restoration
of virtually all affected customers should be completed by late this evening.
Fewer than 400 customers, located mainly in Gloucester, the
Northern Neck and other parts of eastern Virginia, remained without power Friday
afternoon.
Hurricane Isabel was the worst storm in Dominion’s 100-year
history. More than 1.8 million customers lost power. The previous worst storm
for the company was Hurricane Fran in 1996 when 1.1 million customers lost power.
Isabel wreaked catastrophic damage to Dominion’s overhead
electrical facilities in Virginia and northeast North Carolina. During its massive
restoration effort, Dominion had more than 12,000 people – including line
crews from 22 states and Canada -- working to restore power at more than 57,000
separate work locations across its 30,000-square-mile service area.
During the two-week restoration effort, the company replaced:
10,705 utility poles.
14,610 pole cross-arms.
13,018 spans of wire.
7,900 transformers.
“For many of our customers, this recovery period has
been long and difficult. We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding,
and especially the many acts of kindness and support shown our repair crews,”
said Jimmy D. Staton, senior vice president-Operations.
“This truly was a phenomenal restoration effort. I want
to thank all of our dedicated Dominion employees, all the crews who came in
from out of state and all of our suppliers. I also want to especially thank
the Virginia State Police and local police and sheriffs’ departments for
ensuring safe work zones for our repair crews.”
While almost all customers were expected to have their power
restored by Friday evening, a few with unusual circumstances may not have service.
These include customers with second homes where no outage has yet been reported
and flooded or severely damaged homes where power restoration would not yet
be safe.
Dominion is beginning to send trucks back into damaged areas
to pick up material or debris left behind from the restoration effort. Customers
with equipment such as broken poles, damaged wires or transformers in their
yards can help the company in this effort by calling 1-888-667-3000 and reporting
it. Dominion will dispatch a cleanup crew to remove the material.
Customers following outage numbers on the company’s
Web site, www.dom.com, should
be aware that the outages listed are not specific to outages caused by Hurricane
Isabel. While Dominion has restored power to most customers affected by Isabel,
routine outage information continues to be reflected on the Web site.
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.
