Rappahannock County residents who lost power as a result of Monday’s snowstorm may not have service restored for several days.
Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, the area’s sole energy provider, in a news release said the organization is underway in what it’s calling an historic effort to restore electricity to more than 90,000 of its customers whose lines were interrupted by trees that toppled under the weight of wet and heavy snow and strong winds. The storm’s impact on the power grid and related equipment left more than 600 individual damage locations for crews to address, REC said.
According to the organization’s outage map, about 1000 customers in Rappahannock County are without power. Crews were working in Woodville on Tuesday morning to restore power, according to REC.
“This is a historic outage event for REC,” Casey Hollins, managing director of communications and public relations, said in a statement. “We have mobilized all of our resources and we have mutual aid from other states and cooperatives in VA working to assist REC. We know this is a difficult outage for many of our member-owners and their families, and all employees are working together to get the power back on.”
REC’s Culpeper region sustained extensive damage from the storm, and the organization expects some outages to persist through the end of the work week. REC advised customers to seek shelter in the meantime as below-freezing temperatures are anticipated in the coming nights.
Several hundred mutual-aid field employees from as far away as Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia and Florida are expected to join REC’s team as early as Tuesday to assist in making repairs and restoring power. Those additional crews will bring more bucket trucks and other heavy equipment to speed up restoration efforts, according to REC.
REC also has more than 100 tree trimming crew members with additional resources that arrived in the region Monday night. In restoring power, REC focuses first on the largest outages, including repairs to substations and large distribution circuits, according to the organization.
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