RICHMOND, Va., Sept. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion Virginia Power crews are working on the last remaining reported outages from Hurricane Irene. Full restoration of virtually all affected customers should be completed by late tonight.

Fewer than 3,000 customers, located mainly in central Virginia, remained without power Monday afternoon because of Hurricane Irene. These customers were in the areas hit hardest by the storm, in locations where damage to the power system was catastrophic or access was extremely difficult.

In just over eight days since Hurricane Irene exited the Dominion Virginia Power service area, power has been restored to more than 1.2 million homes and businesses. By comparison, after Hurricane Isabel in 2003 the company restored power to more than 1.8 million customers in 15 days.

"This has been a trying time for many of our customers," said Rodney Blevins, vice president of distribution operations for Dominion Virginia Power and Dominion North Carolina Power. "We recognize the hardships that being without electricity can bring, and we appreciate our customers' patience and support throughout the difficult restoration effort.

"We also want to acknowledge the phenomenal effort of the people on the front lines and behind the scenes of the restoration. This includes the dedicated family of Dominion employees, workers from more than 20 other utilities and contractors, our suppliers and many others. A special thank you goes to the many emergency responders and public works employees who helped keep our customers and workers safe and made it possible for us to do our job."

More than 7,000 men and women from Dominion and the other companies worked on storm restoration, cumulatively logging hundreds of thousands of hours of work around the clock. They repaired damage at more than 35,000 work locations.

While virtually all customers were expected to have their power restored by Monday evening, a few unusual circumstances may result in power not being reconnected. This includes customers with second homes where an outage has not been reported yet, and flooded or severely damaged homes where power restoration would not be safe. Anyone who has not yet reported an outage should contact Dominion Virginia Power at 1-866-DOM-HELP (1-866-366-4357).

The Dominion Virginia Power online outage viewer at www.dom.com will continue to show customer outages even after all Irene-related outages have been repaired. These outages are from subsequent events that are not related to the hurricane. Restoration for Dominion customers in the District of Columbia metropolitan area, where damage from the hurricane was less severe, was completed on Tuesday.

"While the storm restoration is just about complete, we want to remind our customers that it is still important to remain focused on safety," Blevins said. "Please call us to let us know about any concerns with your electrical service such as tree limbs on a line, low-hanging wires or detached service wires. And, with so much storm debris and damaged trees around, it is important to be careful moving about outdoors."

Dominion Virginia Power is a subsidiary of Dominion (NYSE: D), one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of approximately 28,200 megawatts of generation. Dominion operates the nation's largest natural gas storage system and serves retail energy customers in 15 states. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's website at www.dom.com.

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SOURCE Dominion