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Winter Storm Riley blasted electric utilities from Virginia to Maine with nearly hurricane-force winds, heavy snowfall and significant damage to infrastructure. Nearly 2.4 million customers — including more than 900,000 in Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Maryland — lost power along the East Coast.
Within the service territory of Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NOVEC), high winds uprooted trees, which tore down lines and broke poles, inflicting 48,875 outages during a storm in early March. “This was the worst storm in years,” says Dan Swingle, NOVEC vice president of system operations. “Those winds with near-hurricane strength blew countless trees on power lines, broke poles and crossarms, and damaged transformers.”
The winter storm left no area untouched. NOVEC’s entire system — from Leesburg all the way down to Stafford, Virginia — was impacted. As a result, all the line crews in four different districts reported for duty, and all hands were on deck.
Calling Upon Crews
After notifying its field workforce of the impending storm, NOVEC dispatched its linemen, as well as its contractors, out to repair damage and restore power. When the linemen arrived on the scene, they were confronted by chilly temperatures and high winds.
The linemen first focused on restoring the critical and large-scale outages first, and then they worked their way down to restore power to the smaller groups of customers. Throughout NOVEC’s service territory, the high winds inflicted widespread damage. A total of 123 wood poles were broken and countless power lines, crossarms and tree limbs were scattered throughout the rights-of-way.
Once the crews reached the outage location, it often would take...