Dominion Virginia Power Focuses Restoration Effort on Public Health, Safety Facilities

September 19, 2003

RICHMOND, Va. - Dominion Virginia Power focused its Hurricane Isabel restoration efforts Friday on water pumping stations and other public health and safety facilities shut down by the worst storm in the company’s 100-year history.

Isabel knocked out the power to more than 100 municipal water pumping stations across the company’s service area. About 20 of the pumping stations identified as critical by municipal authorities had been restored by Friday evening, and another 10 were expected to be back in service overnight. Dominion crews will continue to focus on these important public facilities until all are back in service.

As of 7:30 p.m., Dominion line crews, contractors and line crews from other utilities had restored power to about 400,000 customers, with about 1.4 million customers remaining without power.

While Dominion had assembled a workforce of 7,000 in preparation for Isabel, initial damage assessments sent the call out for more crews from other utilities. Companies from as far as away as Oklahoma and Tennessee answered the call and put their trucks on the road. More than 150 linemen from Florida arrived in Richmond Friday night.

Dominion is urging its customers to notify the company about downed power lines by calling, toll free, 1-888-667-3000. Many felled trees are tangled in power lines and customers should not attempt to clear such trees. Downed power lines are extremely dangerous.

Dominion also urges its customers to use generators safely. Unless installed professionally, they should not be connected to the whole house electrical service. Improperly installed, the electricity could backfeed onto Dominion’s power lines and injure line crews. Please make sure you use portable generators properly.

Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers of energy, with a diversified and integrated energy portfolio that includes 24,000 megawatts of generation and 6.3 trillion cubic feet equivalent of proved natural gas reserves. Dominion also serves 5 million retail energy customers in nine states. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's Web site at www.dom.com.

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Editors and Reporters: Dynamic outage information is available on-line. To determine the number of power outages in your media market, visit www.dom.com, see the Hurricane Isabel logo and click on “Outage Map” or “Outage Summary.” This information is refreshed automatically every 15 minutes.


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