As of Wednesday morning, Northern Neck Electric Cooperative (NNEC) has restored all outages related to the severe storm from Tuesday, January 9th. The storm was system wide as it stretched from Stafford down to Lancaster County. Some areas experienced wind gusts up to 45 mph and up to 3 inches of rainfall.
This severe storm began to impact the Northern Neck region on Tuesday afternoon. The heavy rainfall and winds saturated the ground and destabilized the root structure of trees. As a result, trees fell on lines causing some of the larger outages.
In some places, trees fell, breaking poles, which required extensive work and replacement through adverse conditions. Lineworkers worked through the night to ensure all members were restored as quickly as possible.
At the peak of the impact, more than 3,000 members were without power. Lineworkers, engineers, and support personnel had prepared and staged equipment and vehicles in advance of the storm and responded quickly to the restoration efforts.
“I am proud of our crews’ efforts through the night to get everyone’s power restored,” says Richard McLendon, vice president of operations for NNEC. “For us, it’s personal. Our members are our neighbors, our friends, and our family. No one wanted to quit until the job was done.”
The storm caused nearly 48 separate outage events, and the winds and rain created difficult and dangerous situations for the lineworkers to operate in. The work is not done yet as crews will continue clean-up efforts across the area.
