ROANOKE, Va., April 16, 2007 – Nearly 50,0000 Appalachian Power Virginia customers lost electricity by mid-day as high winds blew across the company’s service territory, knocking down trees and sending debris into power lines. Company officials predict that some customers could be without power until Friday.

“We started the day with just over 20,000 customers without power, and despite making progress, the number of customer interruptions grew to close to 50,000 by early afternoon,” said Phil Wright, Appalachian Power vice president of distribution operations. “This is proving to be the type of storm where our crews remove damage in one area, only to find that additional damage has occurred somewhere else on the circuit.”
 
Weather reports show that the restoration effort will be complicated with continuing high winds in the worst hit areas through Tuesday. For this reason, and because new outages continue to be reported, the company is asking customers without power to prepare for a lengthy outage.  
 
Nearly 300 Appalachian Power employees are working on the storm. In addition, 320 line personnel from outside of the area, and 240 tree-trimming personnel are working to restore service. Additional line crews are coming from West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky.
 
“We have an unusually high number of reports of downed power lines with this storm,” Wright said. “Attempting to remove a tree or a tree limb from a power line could be deadly. Please be patient and let the professionals with the right equipment clear the power lines safely.”
 
Appalachian Power provides electricity to 1 million customers in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee (as AEP Appalachian Power). It is a unit of American Electric Power, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, with more than 5 million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation’s largest generators of electricity, owning nearly 36,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the U.S. AEP also owns the nation’s largest electricity transmission system, a nearly 39,000-mile network that includes more 765 kilovolt extra-high voltage transmission lines than all other U.S. transmission systems combined. 

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Editor’s Note: Updated power outage information is posted four times a day http://www.appalachianpower.com/news/outages/
                                               
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