Thursday, April 25, 2013

UPDATED - SVEC: 17,000 without power west of Staunton

UPDATED: Interestingly, the power came back on at 8:50, just as SVEC said in the recording. Hmm.  A friend said hers was back on at 8:29. I emailed reporter Matt Talhelm at NBC-29 to see if he had heard what was going on, and he responded, "I just talked to their spokesperson and he said an equipment failure at one of the substations caused the outage - starting around 6:30.  Right now, about 2400 still without power, but they hope to have it fully restored by around 9:00!"

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The electricity went out at our house west of Staunton around 6:20 this evening while we were watching Bret Baier on Fox News interviewing former President George W. and Laura Bush at the new George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas.

Bummer.

I posted on Facebook to see if anyone knew anything. Two neighbors let us know theirs was out, too, and the Shenandoah Valley Electric Co-op website said 17,000 people are without power.

That's a lot of houses that will be dark in another hour or so when the sun sets.

So I emailed friends at local news agencies to see if anyone had heard what's up but haven't heard back from them yet. Checked websites ... nothing.

There was no flicker when it went ... it just went. Not the on-and-off thing that sometimes happens. We're wondering if there's an accident some place that snapped a pole.

A call to report the outage resulted in a recording saying the electricity would be back on at 8:50. Not 8:30 or 9:00 ... 8:50. They also said to let them know if you see anything that could have caused the outage. That doesn't instill confidence, and begs the question of how they can estimate a time for it to come back on if they've yet to discover what caused it.

Ah, well. We've retrieved the flashlights and are enjoying sunlight before darkness falls. And hoping the electricity comes back at 8:50.....

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