THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 9, 1996 TAG: 9601090234
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: THE BLIZZARD OF '96
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
Block by block, and in some cases, building by building, the lights came back on in Norfolk on Monday.
None to soon for scores of banks and businesses that went dark and cold Sunday afternoon after a fire and explosions wrecked an underground intersection of key power cables. Electricity had to be cut off in the heart of the city - from the Elizabeth River to Olney Road - to quell the flames and make repairs.
And it might not have happened if someone - anyone - had told Virginia Power that cables under a downtown street had been making suspicious noises for days. But a utility official said Monday there were no calls until it was too late.
``The city of Norfolk people have indicated that there had been some crackling and noise in that manhole for the last few days,'' said Steve Lawrence, director of customer service for Virginia Power.
``That's a sign that the low-voltage cable had started to fail. But nobody reported it to us.''
The city skyline was eerily dark late Sunday, but by morning the lights had come back on in most of the tallest office towers. It took a little longer to restore service in the outlying areas. And in some instances, lights came on briefly, only to go out again a little while after.
Utility crews labored around the clock. By late morning, the municipal complex, including the City Jail, and areas from City Hall Avenue to Olney Road had electrical service once again.
Only the Waterside Convention Center, the Cenit Bank building and a parking garage remained dark Monday afternoon while the adjacent Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel - near ground zero of Sunday's blasts - finally had lights again.
``We're still just sort of limping along,'' said Daniel Morone, hotel general manager, as his staff began getting computers back on line and prepared for the return of some of the 166 guests who had been evacuated to other hotels Sunday.
Outside the Marriott, work continued under the intersection of Main and Atlantic streets late Monday, repairing a mess unlike any Virginia Power crews had seen.
``It's never happened before,'' said Lawrence, the Virginia Power executive.
Initially, it had been thought that two power cables touching had sparked Sunday's noon-hour fire and explosions. But Lawrence said Monday that a failed low-voltage cable appeared to be the real culprit.
He said that once that cable caught fire, the flames spread to five other cables - all primary circuits that ``ended up taking out the whole of downtown.''
This manhole wasn't the worst place to have such a fire. There are other critical underground junctions and facilities downtown, Lawrence said. ``But it's dad-gum close.''
Underground cables, transformers and other equipment have failed in other instances, Lawrence said. But in each, technicians had been able to isolate the fault and, with switching, usually quickly restore service to buildings.
``This happened to be a manhole that had a lot of cable,'' he said. And the fire and explosions caused extensive damage.
The four biggest explosions are believed to have been fueled by naturally occurring methane, a colorless and odorless gas that built up in the pit.
``It's a common building-up of gas,'' Lawrence said. ``You have leakage from sewer lines and drains and just the natural process of decomposition underground, and that gas gets into those holes.''
Lawrence said utility crews routinely check for methane before going into manholes and often must ventilate underground shafts before entering them.
By Monday afternoon, crews had laid more than a half-mile of new cable to replace that which was burned and damaged.
``They have also done a number of splices, which can get very complicated,'' said Junius H. Williams Jr., a Virginia Power spokesman.
To accomplish that, the utility had 20 ``underground network'' technicians at work from Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon when a replacement team drawn in from Richmond and Northern Virginia arrived to take up the task and give the first team a rest.
One saving grace: The blast came on a Sunday, when downtown streets are normally lightly traveled anyway. Plus, while many buildings were still dark early Monday, thousands of office workers were told to stay home because of the wintry weather.
``We also had a lot of good cooperation from the city of Norfolk - the Fire Department, police with traffic - to help us out in the past 24 hours,'' Lawrence said. ``And the Marriott was great. They not only gave us the lobby to use, but fed our people, too.''
So, can such an outage happen again? ``We certainly hope not,'' Lawrence said. MEMO: More on the outage/D1
ILLUSTRATION: MOTOYA NAKAMURA
The Virginian-Pilot
Work continued at the transformer site, though less intensely than
on Sunday.
by CNB