Beckley, Bluefield & Lewisburg News, Weather, SportsWorkers Racing to Restore Power to Several Counties

Workers Racing to Restore Power to Several Counties

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PRINCETON -

There are still thousands of households in southern West Virginia facing another winter night without electricity and it could still be days before the power is restored for some.

Utility crews from neighboring states have been called in to help bring electrical service back online for people in southern West Virginia. There were several rallying points for those workers, who have a wide area to cover. Phil Moye, a spokesperson for AEP explained why it could take days to get service restored.

"We had a lot of damage to deal with from the storm," Phil Moye with AEP said. "In Mercer County in particular the snow fell heavy enough and wet enough and deep enough to where it caused limbs to break.  That's where we are having problems.  In some other counties we saw some accumulation of snow, but in Mercer County it seems in particular there was enough of the snow to weigh down limbs to break and cause trees to come over into lines," Moye continued.

Moye said work crews address the problems that will bring the greatest number of customers back online first, then they work their way down the list to those problems that may affect one or two homes at a time.

"We have about 250 different locations where we have something we have to fix.  It could be a simple task or it could be difficult," Moye stated.  "The job I am going to next, which is where we're going to have to replace a pole and dig a hole by hand and then set the pole by hand because we can't get a truck to it," Moye said.

Moye said Appalachian Power has enlisted a small army of work crews to come into southern West Virginia and help restore the electricity, but the tree damage is so widespread, it could be the weekend before some people have their power restored.

"We brought in about 750 additional workers to help our local power employees restore service.  That's a larger number but it's the type of resources it is going to take to fix the damage."

Moye added that he knows that this disruption in service is more than an inconvenience, but he said they are working as fast as they can to get the lights back on.