Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 18, 1994 TAG: 9402180132
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"People were getting angry by Saturday," said Brogan, one of the Appalachian Power Co. operators who handled thousands and thousands of calls during the company's worst outage. "There was one guy that must have talked to everybody in the office. He got on the speaker phone with his wife, so we got it from both ends," Brogan said Thursday.
An Apco employee for 15 years - the last five as a customer service representative - Brogan knows how to handle that type.
She told callers her power was out, too. That made them feel better. She told them that crews were doing everything they could, but she didn't give misleading information about when their power would be back on.
Many folks were understanding. Still, Brogan said with a laugh, she didn't wear her Apco T-shirt out in public last weekend.
Last week's ice storm left 204,000 - one-quarter of all Apco's customers in West Virginia and Virginia - without power, spokesman Don Johnson said. Some were without TV and electric blankets for a few hours - some for days.
By comparison, Hurricane Hugo robbed 131,000 Apco customers of power, and last June's windstorm knocked power out for 191,600.
At the peak of last weekend's outage, about 25,000 customers in Apco's Roanoke division had no electricity.
Some never got through to the company on the phone.
It's frustrating and irritating. People get mad, and then madder. Tom Jobes, assistant division manager, knows this full well.
"I also think that sometimes they think we've forgotten about them. And we don't," Jobes said.
Johnson added, "We do want people to call in, despite the myth that we flip a switch to the busy signal."
The Roanoke division - which serves the Roanoke valley and parts of six counties - set up 25 phone lines to handle reports of outages. Jobes said that a voice-mail system would take up another line, so they prefer to have live operators working the phones.
But 25 people working 25 phone lines around the clock wasn't enough.
Midday on Friday, WFIR radio station pitched in, as it has before during severe power outages. They went on the air live and took calls from people on four phones, said Bill Bratton, program director.
They compiled a list to fax over to Apco. But the station was running off an emergency generator, and at one point had to run to another business to use its fax machine, Bratton said.
The station took calls most of Saturday, too, breaking for Rush Limbaugh's hour-long program. "You don't interrupt Rush," Bratton said.
Despite the difficulty getting through, customers play a key role in helping Apco restore power.
"People believe we have a magical board or computer" that automatically lights up when a line is down, Jobes said. Not so.
Someday, perhaps; but for now, the utility relies on maps and customer phone calls to figure out what areas are down, which specific houses are out, and where trees have fallen on lines, Jobes said.
Apco also sends "scouts" out to find trouble spots.
As for the other big question on people's minds, Jobes offered this explanation for why some people get power back before others.
Repair crews work much like road crews, first fixing the larger, primary lines, then moving to smaller lines and individual homes.
They work from main stations and radiate outward, he said.
"It's all a function of how close you are to a station," or where the power lines are strung.
The order in which people get power restored also depends to some degree on who gets through on the phone first. If an area is out and Apco doesn't know, it doesn't send crews, Jobes said.
As with every extensive power outage, the company will do a "post-storm review" to see what can be done differently next time. Jobes said that Apco is constantly upgrading its communication system.
Apco plans to install a better radio system for communication among emergency response teams.
The company also is installing switches so that more incoming calls can be diverted to other phone lines in Apco's region, Jobes said.
So, next time there's a storm, and the lights begin to flicker, the digital clock starts blinking, and the house goes dark - call Apco.
Keep trying, and be nice to Karen Brogan or whoever answers. They may be in the dark, too.
by CNB