Press Release
Northeastern REMC has sent crews and equipment to help restore power in Virginia after a Jan. 3 winter storm. Photo provided.
COLUMBIA CITY — Northeastern REMC was one of ten Indiana electric cooperatives to send crews and equipment to help restore power in Virginia after a devastating winter storm moved through on Monday, Jan. 3.
More than 85,000 people were left cold and in the dark after the power system sustained major damage.
NREMC joined more than 30 additional mineworkers from across Indiana on Monday as they left for Rappahannock Electric Cooperative in Culpeper, Va.
Monday’s snowstorm brought up to 12 inches of heavy, wet snow to Virginia along with high winds. The local co-op in Virginia serves close to 170,000 people in 22 countries, and when Northeastern crews arrived, over 72,000 members were still without power. Crews will be working 18-hour staggered shifts around the clock, but the restoration effort is still expected to last at least a week. In addition, restoration efforts will be challenging due to the expected below-freezing temperatures this week.
As of Thursday, Jan. 6, the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative still has 45,365 members without power.
“With that many people without power, we knew that additional crews and bucket trucks were needed to help speed up the efforts to restore power, and we got them there as quickly as we could,” said Jim Eitsert, vice-president of distribution services at NREMC. “We know the group we sent to Virginia will work hard to help wherever they’re needed.”
Electric co-ops in Indiana, like NREMC, belong to a network of hundreds of other co-ops around the country that assist with storms or other events that result in significant power outages. Several hundred employees from Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, and Florida will also be joining the restoration efforts to bring power back online as soon as possible.
“If a storm caused severe damage to our area, we know we’d have hundreds of line workers headed our way too,” said Eisert.
According to Rappahannock Electric Cooperative’s website on Wednesday, Jan. 5, they were able to reduce the number of people affected by power outages to 59,000 and have more than 1,000 workers in the field working together to bring power back to Virginia.