NOVEC crews restore power after powerful thunderstorm

Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative crews are going into their second day of restoring service to customers who lost power during the powerful thunderstorm on Thursday, April 6.

“The storm blew trees and branches on powerlines and broke utility poles,” according to Jill Scherzer, NOVEC System Operations manager. “More than 10,000 customers lost power at the height of the storm Thursday afternoon. As of 10:15 a.m. on Friday, we’ve restored service to all but approximately 400. Many of the outages crews are working on affect just one customer, but it often takes just as much time for a crew to restore service to one customer as it does to thousands.”

Steve Hash, System Operations supervisor, urges any NOVEC customer without power to report it to 703-335-0500 or toll free 1-888-335-0500.

“Please don’t report an outage on social media,” Hash says. “Call us directly. Our phone system sends outage messages to us immediately. The sooner a customer reports an outage, the sooner we can send a crew to the outage location.”

Customers can follow power-outage status at http://www.novec.com .

What to Do If Power Goes Out

· Report the outage by: calling 703-335-0500 or 1-888-335-0500; reporting it at http://www.novec.com; or using NOVEC’s smartphone app to send a   text message. To sign up for text messaging, customers can text the keyword NOVECOUT to 85700 or log onto their accounts on NOVEC’s website.

· Open freezers and refrigerators only when necessary.

· Open exterior doors only when necessary.

· Only run portable generators, camp stoves, or grills outdoors to avoid carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Find more important guidelines at http://www.novec.com/outageinfo .