Power companies have promised to do their best
to restore electricity to people in central Virginia by Saturday. But Friday,
some in southern Albemarle County are still without power and they are worried
crews won't meet their deadline.
As of Friday, Esmont - just north of Scottsville
- was still without power. But people who live on Porters Road in Esmont were
more concerned with a down tree that was laying on a power line. Crews
took the tree down Friday.
"This was just a public safety issue - a
tree over a line that's crossing over our road that we have to pass underneath.
And it was like that for seven days, this was the seventh day," said
Calvin Bryant, who lives just up the street from where the tree fell.
But in a press conference Friday, Larry Jackson, the manager of
external affairs for Appalachian Electric Power said that they're doing their
best.
"We, of course, got started restoring service on Saturday.
We've been doing assessments ever since. We've had helicopters flying the lines
over the past few days to make sure we didn't miss anything," he said.
Appalachian Electric Power says now they're down
to just over 1,000 customers who still don't have power. They also say
they're confident that at least 95 percent of their customers will have it back
on by midnight Saturday.
At the press conference Friday, Appalachian
Electric Power also announced that a cooling station is now opened at Yancey
Elementary School in Esmont.
Click here for the latest on outages and
restoration efforts.
