Appalachian Power chief calls storm 'major historical disaster'

Jul 04 - The Roanoke Times


Asked Tuesday whether he would handle the Virginia power outages differently if given a second chance, the president of Appalachian Power Co. answered without hesitation.

No.

Charles Patton, who stopped in Roanoke while touring his company's Virginia and West Virginia coverage areas, said he sympathized with those who have been without power since devastating winds moved through the area Friday night. But he attributed the long waits for restoration to the storm and to contractor availability.

Patton said previous estimates still stood -- that the bulk of power would be restored to the Roanoke Valley area by Saturday, with a few customers waiting until next week.

Numbers provided by Appalachian showed more than 15,000 customers in Roanoke still were without power Tuesday afternoon, close to 37 percent of the overall customer base in the city. An estimated 22 percent of the utility's Virginia customers were waiting for power to be restored Tuesday.

More than 230,000 Appalachian Power customers in Virginia lost electricity Friday night after a severe windstorm swept through the area, knocking down trees and power lines. At least 11 deaths have been attributed to the storm, and the damage prompted Gov. Bob McDonnell to declare a state of emergency.

Mike Mercier, Appalachian's district manager for Roanoke, said a second storm on Sunday set the restoration back.

Both company officials said two types of power lines took hits from the storm: transmission lines, which often stretch through the countryside, carrying a great deal of electricity from power plants to substations, and less powerful distribution lines, which can be seen in neighborhoods.

Patton said that about 90 transmission lines were damaged, and that the effort to fix them -- which has included the use of helicopters -- remains largely unseen by the general public.

A Charleston, W.Va., resident, Patton said his power was restored Monday evening.

Appalachian officials ask that people stay away from downed power lines during the cleanup process. Already two people have been electrocuted while handling live wires, one in West Virginia and one in Virginia.

In an interview Tuesday morning, Patton talked about Appalachian's response to the outages. What follows are excerpts from that discussion.

How many workers are on the ground right now working to restore power in this region?

For Appalachian Power Co., we are around 2,400 right now. About half of that would be in Virginia. Most of them would be in Roanoke. They are primarily divided between Roanoke and Lynchburg. We still have requests out for additional resources.

And by resources you mean contract workers from out of state?

Contract workers and employees from other utilities. There's a program that we have called Mutual Assistance, and what Mutual Assistance is, it's a contractual relationship between utilities where we agree to help each other. The challenge we had with this particular storm is that many of those nearby, they were also impacted, because the storm hit Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky. So many of those nearby resources that we would normally get were working on their own electric systems, which meant we had to reach farther to get resources to help us.

So rather than adjacent states, we've have to get people from the Gulf Coast, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Florida and North Dakota.

It took us a little bit longer than normal to get resources on the ground. And that's despite the fact that we had our first storm meeting within two hours of the storm, and at that point in time we were already requesting 500 resources to help us.

By the next morning that number had grown to 1,000, and by the end of the day that number was 1,500.

Any idea how many more workers will be coming into this area?

About 750 more, ideally. We're taking everything we can get, and what we're hoping is that in some of the areas that were not damaged as badly, we'll see some resources freed up that are closer to us. Our problem is that there's nothing nearby that's available. That's our real problem.

What kind of shifts are people working?

I would say we're getting out in the morning around 6:30 and 7 a.m., and then typically they're coming back after dusk. So you'd start seeing significant numbers coming in around 9 p.m. and then some coming in later who are on the job and had enough lighting.

Is there a reason there aren't people working overnight shifts?

The problem is we're hanging electrical lines and we're having to redo poles. That's just not work that's conducive to pitch black. You've got to remember that â? we're not out on the plains. We're dealing with hills, we're dealing with rural areas, and safety is first and foremost.

I think there's still some confusion about how the prioritization works. Could you explain?

What we do is we prioritize hospitals, nursing homes and water and wastewater treatment. Those are what we consider essential services.

Then, we look at where we can have the greatest impact in terms of picking up customers, so where will we get the biggest bang for our effort. So you'll look at circuits that have the most people on them.

You think about it as a population center, we look at it in terms of circuits.

Are you still standing by the dates, that Saturday will be the latest people will be without power?

Well, I think there will be some in the area where it'll be Sunday. But we think by Saturday that we'll have the bulk of folks on. There's going to be a very small number of people who'll linger into next week.

Is this a situation where people may not necessarily see a truck in their neighborhood?

Well, the trucks are where the damage is, and the damage may not be visible to you. There are a lot of poles in areas that are off the beaten path.

Dominion Power said Monday night that it has about 75 percent of its customer base fully powered again. What's the difference between the two companies?

Well, a lot of it is geographic. Dominion, first of all, doesn't have quite the terrain that we do. Secondly, they have far denser urban areas. So you're able to pick up large numbers of people in that situation.

If this happened again, or if you had another shot at it, would you do anything differently?

No. I think we're very disciplined in our review of what we do well and what we don't. Like I said, we were securing resources within two hours of the storm, which allowed us to receive resources a lot faster than many other utilities that were impacted.

So, it's unfortunate. I really do understand, and I'm very sympathetic to the fact that we have these outages, particularly given the heat. But this storm was a major historical disaster. ... The damage is tremendous. And given the breadth of this storm, I applaud my employees for doing an outstanding job.

We're going to keep reaching out all week to get folks on as quickly as we can.

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