Dominion Virginia Power crews are working on the last remaining reported outages from Hurricane Irene. Fewer than 3,000 customers, located mainly in central Virginia, remained without power Monday afternoon because of Hurricane Irene. These customers were in the areas hit hardest by the storm, in locations where damage to the power system was catastrophic or access was extremely difficult.
In just over eight days since Hurricane Irene exited the Dominion Virginia Power service area, power has been restored to more than 1.2 million homes and businesses. By comparison, after Hurricane Isabel in 2003 the company restored power to more than 1.8 million customers in 15 days.
"This has been a trying time for many of our customers," said Rodney Blevins, vice president of distribution operations for Dominion Virginia Power and Dominion North Carolina Power. "We recognize the hardships that being without electricity can bring, and we appreciate our customers' patience and support throughout the difficult restoration effort.
"We also want to acknowledge the phenomenal effort of the people on the front lines and behind the scenes of the restoration. This includes the dedicated family of Dominion employees, workers from more than 20 other utilities and contractors, our suppliers and many others. A special thank you goes to the many emergency responders and public works employees who helped keep our customers and workers safe and made it possible for us to do our job."
More than 7,000 men and women from Dominion and the other companies worked on storm restoration, cumulatively logging hundreds of thousands of hours of work around the clock. They repaired damage at more than 35,000 work locations.
