THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 23, 1996 TAG: 9608230069
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LORI A. DENNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 50 lines
Directing traffic at the hectic intersection of Independence and Virginia Beach boulevards wasn't what Californian Leilani Morrison had in mind for her vacation here.
But that's exactly what she and her brother, Clifford Geiwitz, 27, did Thursday when a midday power outage left 21,400 Virginia Power customers in Virginia Beach without electricity and at least half a dozen traffic signals out of whack around Pembroke, one of the city's busiest areas.
Morrison, 29, came to Virginia Beach on vacation from northern California to visit the brother she hadn't seen in about 22 years.
As the family sat at an outdoor picnic table eating tacos at the Taco Bell on the corner of Virginia Beach and Independence boulevards, things began to get a little crazy.
``The electricity went out and all of a sudden there were cars everywhere. People were honking and cursing. It was a mess,'' said Morrison, the mother of two. ``We saw two little kids trying to cross and I yelled to my brother, `Hey, we need to do something.' ''
Morrison and Geiwitz, along with two bystanders, jumped into the chaos.
Morrison manned the corner, while her brother, a tow truck driver, stood in the middle of the intersection with two other men waving their arms to give drivers directions.
``It took about five or 10 minutes to get things controlled,'' the housewife said Thursday as she stepped off the curb to stop a lane of traffic for a wailing ambulance. ``I'll tell you, I'm sure not used to this heat. We were really just concerned about getting the kids across but figured we'd help everyone else out, too.''
Lou Thurston, a Virginia Beach Police spokesman, said that dispatchers logged 35 calls for service just after the power went out at 3:15p.m. Officers arrived to relieve Morrison and Geiwitz 40 minutes into the power outage.
One traffic accident at the intersection of Independence Boulevard and Bonney Road was reported, Thurston said.
Virginia Power spokesperson Pat Gayle said the outage was caused by a transformer that blew up in a local substation. At 4 p.m., 7,400 customers were still without power, Gayle said. Power was fully restored to most of those customers by 5 p.m.
As for Morrison and Geitwitz, they decided to go home and enjoy the rest of their vacation together.
``We did a pretty good job, didn't we, bro?'' said Morrison as she draped an arm around her brother's shoulders and the two walked off to join the rest of their family in a parking lot.
KEYWORDS: POWER OUTAGE by CNB