Fredericksburg, Va. - Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) crews, contractors and mutual-aid workers have replaced hundreds of broken poles and restored service to nearly 90,000 members after Winter Storm Frida. However, significant repairs remain to be made. As of Sunday morning, about 8,600 members remain without power.
A few important notes:
- More than 900 individual outage events remain – many requiring at least several hours’ worth of repairs.
- Hundreds of broken poles remain to be fixed and more broken poles are being found as crews work deeper into nested outages.
- Ground conditions and other obstacles require specialized equipment such as track machines to reach damage sites to replace the poles.
- Tree damage was significant, and tree removal continues with the help of REC’s vegetation management team, contractors, state and local emergency responders, and mutual aid crews from across the country.
- In addition to poles, hundreds of transformers, fuses and other critical equipment still needs to be repaired.
- A workforce of 1,200 lineworkers from REC and across the country are now working around the clock to make repairs and restore service as quickly and safely as possible. More crews have been brought in every day as they have become available.
- Crews may come and go from work sites for a variety of reasons: They continue to do damage assessments, and sometimes the damage discovered requires a different type of crew or equipment than was already on site. Restoration starts by pinging meters electronically around a reported outage to gain a wider perspective of how large of an outage area exists; logging all outage reports into the system to account for each map location that has lost power and dispatching line crews immediately to areas of identified and confirmed outages.
- Though the co-op knows there are reported outages, the exact cause is not yet known. Each situation is unique and field crews first must be investigators in determining where the problem is on the power line path. When there is severe damage from downed trees, field crews may not be in a position to directly drive to the problem area. At times they must drive around an outage area that can span several miles or walk a line for a mile or more to reach the outage cause.
“While significant challenges remain, we are commitment to restoring power as quickly and safely as possible,” said Casey Hollins, Managing Director – Communications and Public Relations.
REC’s website, myrec.coop, has been updated to include estimation restoration times where available as well as crew work locations.
An important safety reminder: Continue to stay well clear of any downed power lines and other electric equipment. Never attempt to move electrical equipment or repairs on your own.
