Dominion Virginia Power has restored electricity to close to 90 percent of customers across the state as of Tuesday afternoon. But around 7,500 people in Charlottesville and Albemarle County are still in the dark. Dominion says it's doing everything it can, as quickly as it can, to solve the problem.
Crews have hit all of the major areas lacking power, and are now turning to smaller neighborhoods and remote areas.
Neighbors near Fry's Spring in Charlottesville are just now getting their power back, and some of the men and women doing the hard work have been pulling long hours to do it. Some have logged 24, even 30 plus hour shifts during the past few days. Dominion wants to get those numbers down to ensure safety.
"We're in the middle of the restoration effort right now," Dominion Virginia Power Construction Supervisor Adrian Wade said, "So we want to drop it down to 14 hours of work, 10 hours off."
"It ain't just simple show up, set a pole, and tie a piece of wire in. It ain't that simple," added lineman Greg Utz.
Dominion is also urging you to think before trying to fix problems, and avoid down power lines and other hazards until crews can help.
"We've had homeowners come out and they've trimmed the trees and taken down some trees," Wade said. "Thanks, but you'll want to leave that to us."
Dominion says this is the third worst power outage in the company's history and the only outage in the top five that was not caused by hurricane-forced winds.
It could take until Saturday to get all customers back in service, but Dominion says it's a day ahead of schedule. The Charlottesville office has all hands on deck to restore power to the area. The company has even pulled vacationing employees back home to help.
More than 5,000 people from 18 states and Canada are working to restore power across the commonwealth this week.
