The PSC memo cited staff vacancies and a lack of attention to equipment failures as two underlying causes of reliability concerns.
The PSC says Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power’s reliability is unreasonable and drags down the reliability of the state’s electricity relative to surrounding states.
The PSC issued the memo on Sept. 27, the day Tropical Storm Helene marched into the region and disrupted power to tens of thousands of Appalachian Power customers.
As of Thursday, several thousand Appalachian Power customers were awaiting the restoration of service in southern West Virginia, mostly in Mercer County.
The company asked the PSC for a 10-day extension to respond to the memo, citing the availability of personnel who were involved in the post-storm restoration effort.
The PSC memo cited staff vacancies and a lack of attention to equipment failures as two underlying causes of reliability concerns.
Residents of Wheeling were cleaning up Wednesday after a strong storm Tuesday morning.
Residents of Wheeling were cleaning up Wednesday after a strong storm Tuesday morning. The damage is significant, but isolated.
Generators, chainsaws, and woodchippers provided a soundtrack Wednesday as the Wheeling community recovered from the Tuesday morning storm that knocked out power to most of downtown, Wheeling Hospital, and several communities to the east.
The damage was severe enough that Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency for Ohio County Wednesday afternoon that will remain in effect for 30 days.
At its height, the storm passed through the area with sustained winds of 60-70 miles per hour, and gusts of up to 80 miles per hour.
Lou Vargo, the Director of the Wheeling–Ohio County Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, says the trail of damage indicates a unique weather event.
“It’s a straight line event,” Vargo said. He is asking the National Weather Service to investigate.
“And they said, ‘So are you thinking a tornado?’ We’re not seeing the twisting of the trees coming out. It’s just literally uprooted these trees, 100 year old trees, three or four foot diameter trunks of trees that were just lifted right out of the ground,” he said. “You can almost look on a map and just draw a straight line, put an arrow and say ‘This is how it came through.’”
Some of the promised 100 work crews have already arrived to help restore power as quickly as possible. As of Wednesday evening, 7,000 residents remained without power, but an American Electric Power (AEP) representative said restoration would continue late into the evening.
The number of residents without power had improved to 5,000 by Thursday morning.
“This is an all hands on deck situation,” said Joelle Moray, External Affairs Manager with AEP.
Justice also announced members of the National Guard will be on the ground Thursday to help with cleanup.
No fatalities or injuries directly related to the storm have been reported. Vargo hopes it stays that way, and urges any residents using power tools or moving large downed trees and limbs to use caution.
Sections of trees downed by Tuesday’s storm had to be cleared to make roads in Wheeling Park passable. The park bore the brunt of the damage from the storm, and park officials estimate more than 100 trees were damaged.Workers in Wheeling Park feed debris into a wood chipper as part of cleanup efforts Wednesday. A strong storm on he morning of June 14 caused significant damage to the park’s trees.
To the east of downtown, Wheeling Park seemed to bear the brunt of the storm’s force. Park manager Nat Goudy said more than 100 trees were damaged, many of them large and decades old.
“Some massive, massive trees that were 50, 60 feet high, just drop, snap like a twig,” Goudy said.
So many trees were down Tuesday morning, Goudy said he couldn’t even drive into the park and had to come in on foot. The park’s roads had been cleared Wednesday, but the park was still without power. Goudy hopes it will be restored soon so the park can return to being a center of the community even as cleanup efforts continue.
“We’re the city park,” he said. “It was amazing seeing the support of the people coming in yesterday. ‘What can we do? Can we bring some rakes over? We’re here to help you.’ You know, just people who love the parks, want to make sure it stays open.”
Vicky Yost echoed that sentiment of camaraderie.
“In the middle of a catastrophe, in the middle of what could have been a tragedy, I looked up my lane and I saw eight of my neighbors coming down,” she said.
Yost lives across National Road from Wheeling Park in the Stamm Lane area, which was directly in the path of the storm.
One of those helpful neighbors was Terry Huffman, who described being woken up by the storm.
“It was the wee hours of the morning. I’m not sure exactly what time but it hit hard and fast, five minutes, maybe,” Huffman said. “Literally the whole house shook and was as loud as a train going through your house.”
Huffman was helping the Yosts get a generator installed to make sure they had a way to cool themselves down.
“The biggest thing now is we have people without air conditioning, and it’s going to be really super hot today,” he said.
Terry Huffman assessed storm damage in front of his house in the Stamm Lane area of Wheeling. Huffman considered himself lucky, as falling trees just missed hitting his home during the June 14 storm.A black walnut tree blown over by the June 14 storm lies precariously over a street in the Stamm Lane area of Wheeling.
According to data from the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, Wednesday’s high in Wheeling was 92. But with high humidity, the heat index –- or what the temperature feels like –- was closer to 100.
Tim Ritchie walked across the bridge from his home on Wheeling Island to access a cooling shelter in the WesBanco Arena. He said the walk, which normally takes him 15 minutes, took him an hour in the heat. If power outages persist along with high temperatures, his biggest concern is his elderly neighbors.
“Half the island’s pretty much no electric and there’s a lot of people that don’t drive,” Ritchie said. “I mean they offer bus service, but the elderly is not going to hop on the bus and come down here.”
Officials hope additional work crews will help get more people back on the grid quickly, but efforts may be stymied Thursday by even higher temperatures, and the threat of more storms through the afternoon and into the evening.
“We can restore power during a rain event,” Moray said. “The wind is the factor.”
AEP is monitoring the weather, but the company’s meteorologists believe any storms Thursday will not rise to the level of Tuesday’s event.
A man walks across 16th Street under a traffic light with no power in downtown Wheeling. In the background, just one block away, other traffic lights are functional. The June 14 storm left a focused line of destruction across the Wheeling area.A man looks at a tree completely blocking Grandview Street in the Vineyard Hills area of Wheeling. Work began on removing the tree, but was stopped due to the tree lying on a power line.Tuesday’s storm significantly damaged the roof of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Services Mary Margaret Laipple Professional Building in downtown Wheeling.
Appalachian Power says it will take a few days for crews to restore electricity to thousands of West Virginia customers who lost power during a winter storm.
According to the company’s website about- 7,500 customers remained without power Monday in southern West Virginia. The website showed 3,000 customers in Mercer County and about 1,900 in McDowell County were without power. The company says power is expected to be restored to residents and businesses in McDowell and Wyoming counties by late Tuesday and in Mercer County by late Wednesday.
The storm brought heavy, wet snow Saturday night that cut power to more than 13,000 customers in the three counties. The utility says it has more than 1,000 workers involved in restoration efforts with additional crews arriving Monday from outside its service area. The company says there is a great amount of damage to assess and repair.
In 2016 Appalachian Power launched a multi-million dollar investment to inspect thousands of utilities poles across the region. In addition, after the Deracho of 2012 AEP launched a maintenance program meant to improve service reliability and reduce the impact of damaging storms. In an email, AEP’s Phil Moye said both programs help prevent damage from heavy storms like the one that hit over the weekend.
In areas crews have cleared so far, Moye says tree-related outages have dropped nearly 40 percent but, quote, “The work doesn’t eliminate damage in major storms like we had Sunday because trees can (and do) fall from well outside the right-of-way we are allowed to maintain.”
This story was updated on Tuesday, March 27 to include a response from Appalachian Power.
Thousands of customers remain without power in West Virginia after high winds blew through the state.
Appalachian Power says on its website that nearly 5,200 homes and businesses had no electricity Wednesday morning, while FirstEnergy says about 1,400 customers had no service.
The hardest-hit counties in Appalachian Power’s service area were nearly 1,400 outages in Lincoln County and about 1,000 in Kanawha County. More than one-third of FirstEnergy’s outages were in Ritchie County.
The numbers are down from at least 14,000 power outages reported across several counties Tuesday night after a storm system with high winds moved through the state.
More than 66,000 customers in West Virginia remained without power following the latest winter storm.
Appalachian Power reported nearly 30,900 outages as of 6:30 a.m. Friday. That’s about 3 percent of its more than 1 million customers in West Virginia.
About 35,300 Mon Power customers also were without electricity Friday morning. That’s nearly 7 percent of its more than 525,200 customers across the state.
According to Appalachian Power, weather conditions are affecting its efforts to restore power. Officials say heavy snow continues to weigh down trees and travel conditions remain challenging.
The company says it has brought in additional crews from Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana to help with restoration efforts.
