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Central VA power outages continue - possibly for days

Bob Leweke

After Monday's winter storm, more than 100,000 households are still without power in Virginia. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.

As of 12:30 p.m., 122,369 Dominion Energy customers were still without electricity in Virginia, including almost all customers in Louisa County, and large portions of Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Culpeper, Fluvanna, and Orange.

Spokesperson Jeremy Slayton said the snow and wind caused broken poles, downed power lines, and tree branches falling onto power lines. On Monday –

SLAYTON: Travel conditions were just so treacherous, and the working conditions were difficult. It slowed the restoration process. But, you know, today, the sun's out, it's going to be a little bit warmer, winds are going to be a little bit calmer. … We're bringing in some crews from other states to help with our restoration efforts.

He said they don't have a set time estimate for repairing the hardest-hit regions, but customers should prepare for being without power for multiple days.

SLAYTON: This is actually one of our five worst winter storms in our history … in our Dominion Energy Virginia service territory, it's one of the top five. … At some point during the storm, we had nearly 390,000 customers losing power.

And according to Appalachian Power's outage map, as of 12:30 p.m., 17,234 customers were without power in Virginia, with a large concentration in Albemarle County, and other significant outages in Lynchburg and the counties of Amherst, Nelson, Bedford, and Franklin.

Randi B. Hagi first joined the WMRA team in 2019 as a freelance reporter. Her writing and photography have been featured in The Harrisonburg Citizen, where she previously served as the assistant editor; as well as The Mennonite; Mennonite World Review; and Eastern Mennonite University's Crossroads magazine.