THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 3, 1996 TAG: 9602030328
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
``Hi. I'm calling from the Churchland area of Portsmouth. As you know, I'm sure, the power is out here. Any idea when it's going to be turned back on?''
For more than the hundredth time on Friday, Virginia Power customer service representative Angi Lee calmly broke the bad news.
It would be at least 24 hours before the power would be back, she said. Maybe more. ``If you have anywhere else to go, please do,'' Lee recommended.
The Portsmouth woman was just one of more than 82,000 customers left without electricity by 5:30 p.m. Friday as ice and freezing rain downed power lines throughout the region.
``Freezing rain is about the worst thing a utility company can deal with,'' said Allen Hartman, district manager for Virginia Power's Norfolk office.
And Norfolk - with its above-ground power lines and old trees - is one of the worst cities in which to experience an ice storm.
By 3:15 p.m. Friday, nearly a fifth of the city's 96,000 customers were without power. But Hartman was ready.
He had 20 repair crews out on the streets. Extra help coming from Richmond and Fairfax. Professional tree-cutters on board. Surplus diesel for the company's own emergency generator. Orders to the cafeteria to stay open all night. And three pizzas just coming in the door.
He was set for a long, frustrating haul. For as soon as his crews repaired the downed wires, more ice-encrusted tree limbs broke off - sometimes ripping out the just-fixed line.
On the building's second floor, more than 100 customer service representatives manned the front lines of ``Operation get the power back on.'' By mid-afternoon, they'd taken more than 18,000 calls and expected another 17,000 before the night ended.
The most important rule when dealing with frustrated, often freezing, customers? ``Be up front with them,'' Lee cautioned.
So when one customer suspiciously asked why her mother's power in Chesapeake's Greenbrier section was still on while her Portsmouth power was off, Lee calmly explained about the pine trees. ``Their roots are shallow, and they can't handle the weight of the ice. They topple over, pulling out our lines. They don't have that many pine trees in Greenbrier.''
Downstairs, in the hushed, dim room that is Virginia Power's command post, dispatchers read the outage information on computer screens and triaged them, ranking each for repair by the number of customers in the dark. Radio dispatchers then send the information to repair crews in the field.
Operations supervisor Lester Pauls sat behind a mauve, U-shaped desk, holding one phone in his left hand and cradling the second on his shoulder, scribbling madly on the pad before him, as he tried to help a repair crew in the field figure out why they couldn't get the power back.
Suddenly, the lights flickered.
``There she goes,'' Pauls muttered. He punched some buttons on his computer, trying to fix the power problem on the spot. The flickering stopped.
The lights at Virginia Power stayed on. ILLUSTRATION: POWER OUT
As of 6 p.m. Friday:
Virginia Beach: 20,000
Newport News, Hampton: 18,000
Norfolk: 16,000
Chesapeake: 15,000
Portsmouth, Suffolk: 12,000
MORE ON THE STORM
In the ice-damaged neighborhoods/A6
Full page of photos/A8
Storm closings/A9
KEYWORDS: WINTER STORM ICE ELECTRICITY by CNB