MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For the second weekend in a row, high winds caused havoc across the power generation grid statewide. Mon Power spokesperson Hannah Catlett said the storm left a similar impact as the storm the previous weekend.
“About the same number of customers were impacted,” Catlett said. “So, just under 50,000, and that’s a decent amount of damage that our crews have had to restore and do so quickly and safely.”
Preparations for Mon Power began as restoration efforts from the previous storm were wrapping up when in-house meteorologists began to track the April Fools Day storm. She said workers have been on the ground since Saturday.
“We have about 165 Monmouth County linemen out working with at least 88 contractors, some of whom came from out-of-state to help us get everybody working today,” Catlett said.
Most of the widespread outages have been addressed. Now, only a few counties are reporting more than 100 residents without power, while most just have isolated outages across their service area.
“About 300 of them are in Roane County, about 200 in Hancock, and around 200 in Calhoun,” Catlett said. “From there, you have a handful in a couple other counties.”
Catlett said crews expect to finish restoration efforts across their system by the close of business Monday, April 3.
“We do estimate we will be able to restore the majority of those customers by the end of the day today,” Catlett said.