University students and Charlottesville residents experienced a series of power outages yesterday morning following a night of heavy rains and high winds that caused trees to fall on power lines.
The first outages occurred after 4 a.m. and continued intermittently because of sustained winds, affecting approximately 13,000 Dominion Virginia Power customers in the Charlottesville area. As of yesterday afternoon, Dominion estimated that 390 of their Charlottesville customers remained without power.
Although outages were scattered throughout the city, they were concentrated near Route 29 and around Rio Road and Old Brooks Road.
Charlottesville and nearby communities were under wind advisories yesterday until 6 p.m. Sustained winds between 25 and 30 mph occurred throughout the day, with gusts up to 50 mph.
"The conditions are such that the root systems of the trees have been weakened because of last year's drought," said Le-Ha Anderson, manager for community and media relations at Dominion Virginia Power. "Hurricane Isabel further weakened the root systems, and we've had rains saturate the ground. Combined with today's high winds, it's a formula for power outages."
High winds and fallen trees were the cause of power outages on Grounds as well, since Dominion is also the University's electricity provider. According to University Facilities Management officials, most of the power failures on grounds occurred around 7:30 a.m. yesterday morning and power remained out for approximately an hour.
University power outages were primarily a result of fallen trees at two different locations.
"Power went down because of a large branch near Stribling Avenue that took out Dominion's feeder to us," said Cheryl Gomez, director of utilities for Facilities Management. "We lost incoming service to our Eastern substation."
The downed power line near Stribling Avenue resulted in a loss of power in academic buildings on the east side of Grounds.
Another tree downed a power line near Observatory Hill, causing surrounding buildings, including the Aerospace Research Center, to lose electricity. Although Dominion estimated they would be able to repair the power line near Observatory Hill by this morning, the extent of damage to the line may prove an obstacle.
"It looks like the Observatory Hill line may take longer to fix," Gomez said. "Several poles and transformers came down with the line."
As far as restoring power to the rest of the Charlottesville area, Anderson said it would be difficult to estimate restoration times until the winds died down.
In the meantime, Charlottesville restoration crews and additional crews from surrounding areas have been working to restore power to Charlottesville residents.
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