Power mostly restored in Eastern Panhandle

Approximately 17,500 homes and businesses lost power in the local area as Hurricane Sandy blew through last Monday and Tuesday, October 29-30.

At 11 p.m. Monday, 2,582 households and businesses were without power in Morgan County, 9,059 in Berkeley County, 680 in Jefferson County and 5,138 in Wash-ington County, Maryland.

By 9 p.m. Tuesday, October 30 as the storm subsided in the area, Potomac Edison reported the number of outages in Morgan County was down to 1,536. By Thursday evening, that number had dwindled to 173.

FirstEnergy, parent company of Potomac Edison and Mon Power, spokesman Todd Meyers could not provide specific numbers for outages that occurred in Hancock. He said there were some stubborn outages in town. “One outage in Hancock took a fair amount of work,” Meyers said.

All customers in the Eastern Panhandle were scheduled to be restored by midnight Saturday, November 3.
A check of the power company’s website Saturday evening showed less than five outages left in Morgan County.

Some not so lucky
Hurricane Sandy left many people in Maryland and West Virginia without power for long periods of time.
In an area encompassing Garrett County in Maryland and most of central West Virginia, Potomac Edison and Mon Power were fighting snow drifts up to five feet high, wind and cold temperatures while trying to reach customers and restore power.

“In many counties in West Virginia there were widespread outages, widespread snow, and few passable roads. We can’t even get a helicopter in the air,” Meyers said Thursday.

Crews are working with the National Guard to try and reach customers to restore power in many remote areas, he said.

Some power customers in the areas of the state affected by deep snow may have to wait a week and a half to get their power back and others may have to wait two weeks.

A FirstEnergy press release said the company has 15,000 employees across their five power companies working to restore power in the mid-Atlantic and northeast.

“To date, material issued for the restoration effort includes more than 95 miles of wire, 700 utility poles and 5,400 crossarms and transformers,” the press release said.

“For FirstEnergy, this has been a historic storm and we are just glad we are making as much progress as we have,” Meyers said.